


The New Bitch

by carbonmonoxidepoisoning



Category: 6 Underground (2019)
Genre: BECAUSE PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS ARE GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH, BUT YOUR FAV STILL GETS BASHED OKAY, Drug Withdrawal, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of child exploitation, READ ABOUT IT, Tags updated as story progresses, Whump, also we support hetro platonic relationships in this house, am i drawing from current events?, and all the bad things that come with the aforementioned crimes, bls, bls give me attention, drug use and abuse, i mean its not false advertising but its also not the point of the story, in this fic - Freeform, mentions of CP, mentions of child abuse, mentions of human trafficking, there's billy whump, these are attention tags, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 37,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22354894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carbonmonoxidepoisoning/pseuds/carbonmonoxidepoisoning
Summary: One finds an Eight and she's a massive bitch. The team faces a steep learning curve.
Relationships: Background Three | Javier/Two | Camille, Four | Billy (6 Underground) & Original Character(s), Minor Four | Billy/Six
Comments: 37
Kudos: 65





	1. The Bitch

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to get back into writing so I will attempt to have one new chapter every week, but no promises. Pls leave me your thoughts, I would love to learn to be better!

“Of all the views on earth, why the hell did you pick this shithole?” a voice asked from behind her.

Her shoulders stiffened at the unfamiliar and unexpected voice, but she decided he wasn’t worth turning to see. These were her moments and some nosy guy was not about to get in her way. Instead she tried to soak in the smell of the city, the earthiness of the sweet potato steamer carts, the sting of the pollutants that spewed out from the hundred of cars below, the familiar waft of a cheap cigarette between her fingers. All in all, Shanghai, or at least the poor part of it, was not the cleanest sight (or smell), but it was what she was working with. She’d come to terms with what had happened, and what needed to happen next. 

She took a final drag and flicked the butt off in some direction, really committing her mind to whatever external stimuli she could, as she stood from her perch on the edge of the building.

“Not even going to acknowledge that I’m here?” the guy asked. “Wow, that really hurts my feelings to be ignored like that.”

And that was it. Moment gone, composure broken, zen kaput.

She whirled around. “Oh, fuck off!” she shouted, hopping back down onto the barren roof terrace and storming by him, bee-lining straight for the door.

“Wait!” the guy called after her, “I need to talk to you about something!”

“Sucks to be you, ‘cause I don’t give a shit,” she yelled back. By this point her head was out of sight as she descended down the stairs, but her hand was _very_ visible and clearly flipping him off. “Fucking dickhead Americans, always up in everyone’s shit,” she cursed to herself.

“It’s about your mission!” and she stopped dead in her tracks. “I know it failed and I know it was sabotage.”

She was right back up those stairs, both hands on the guy’s collar on the ground before she knew it. “You don’t know **_shit!_ **” she spat at him. “How could you possibly know anything? Huh?! Who the fuck are you?”

“That’s not too important-” he tried to pacify her, hands above his head in surrender.

She let one hand go to retrieve a small pocket knife from her pants and had the point at his throat in a second. “I’ll fucking decide what is or isn’t important.”

The guy’s tone didn’t seem to change even a bit, _the prick,_ she thought. “I ought to let you know there’s a sniper with your head in his sights, right now. He’s very good.”

The small woman barked out a laugh, sharp and bitter. “What kind of a sick fuck are you?”

The man gave a nonchalant shrug. “Look, I’m just going to cut to the chase, okay? The agency that fucked up all your shit? I’m trying to take them down. Do you want in or not?”

She examined him for a moment, brow furrowed to find any kind of tell that this smelt any more off than she thought it already did. The verdict was, yes, that shit stank. “How the fuck do you know that shit?”

“Well,” he started, like he was hiding something, “nothing’s _really_ classified if you look hard enough.”

He lay there, shoulders held off the ground under her grip with a knife _still_ pressing at his adam’s apple as the woman glared him into the concrete below, waiting for her verdict. “It’s a very interesting tactic you’re employing. You need to gain my trust so you’re choosing to actively antagonise me instead,” she said, then leaned in threateningly close. “I don’t fucking care if your sniper has the shot, I don’t fucking care if you think you’re safe, I’m telling you right fucking now if you don’t start answering questions I can guarantee I will gut you before that shot hits me.” 

The man, _still_ infuriatingly unaffected, “That’s cold. Don’t you think? You just lost your team, you had to put down your own right hand man; are you really about to kill an innocent bystander?”

“I’ll do it,” she promised, but her voice wavered.

“You won’t.”

“I’ll do it! I will! I’ll fucking kill you right now!” she screamed into his face, but her voice cracked and her hands shook.

The guy, _Prick_ , she called him in her head, slowly lowered his hands to the knife, one hand on it and the other gently squeezing her wrist. “Look. We both want the same thing. As far as your agency is concerned, you’re a dead man walking. I’m asking you to make that mean something.”

She took a shaky breath and sighed with no small amount of reluctance. “Dixon’s head is mine.”

“You can kill the whole gang if you want,” he offered. “In fact, I’m kind of counting on it.”

“Fine,” she agreed. “So what’s the catch?”


	2. A Plan of Attack

The gang, minus One (who was never on time), were assembled in the briefing room when the stranger arrived. The conversation came to a dead stop like an old western. She inspected the group from where she stood in the doorway, and they inspected her. Average height, slim to average build, dark hair pulled into a tight bun, sharp brown eyes. All in all, unremarkable at first glance. No one dared to speak first, so she simply proceeded to the back of the room and dumped herself in a chair.

The group shared uncertain looks, but it was ultimately Five who took the first step and walked up to greet the woman. 

The stranger in the chair glanced up from her phone when she approached, barely an acknowledgement.

"Hi, you must be-"

Clearly what Five had to say held no interest to the stranger because she swivelled her chair to face away from her. Stunned by her reaction, Five turned to the group, eyes wide with confusion.

 _What?_ she mouthed.

They silently looked amongst themselves for an answer and collectively shrugged back. _Dunno._

Perplexed and potentially defeated (it sure felt like a defeat), Five returned to the huddle.

"This is some bullshit," Seven decided, his voice a hiss.

"Yeah, I dunno," Four chimed in. "It don’t sit right with me."

"But what can we do?" Three shrugged. "She's already here. She knows who we are."

"Wait for One," Two said, "he must have a plan." Though, it was pretty clear she trusted the stranger about as far as she could throw her.

And with the kind of convenient timing only seen in movies, One popped into the room with a flourish. "Alright! Thank you everyone for being here on time."

"Just following your fine example," Two was quick to snip at him.

"Okay I'm going to need about thirty percent less attitude from you, thanks," he sounded genuinely wounded.

She rolled her eyes at him with a scoff.

In the back corner, hidden in One’s predilection for mood lighting, the stranger remained unmoved and indifferent. Four wondered what on her phone could be so interesting to her. _Angry Birds?_

They began briefing. Some ridiculously wealthy CEO was hiding a child trafficking ring behind his multibillion (trillion?) dollar corporation. Clearly, the guy and his lackeys need their laundry hung out for them. Seemed straightforward enough. Maybe a healthy dose of public dissent if they could squeeze it into the schedule.

"So where does she come into this plan?" Seven asked, thumbing in the direction of the stranger.

"Well that's perfect timing because _Eight_ ," he strongly emphasised her name to get her attention, “is going to tell us. Right, Eight?" The man sounded nervous.

Finally, with a dramatic swivel, the woman stood from her seat and made her way to the front of the room, pointedly cutting through the huddle to get there. Seven put up some resistance and got shoulder checked for it.

"Hey-!" He was about to get in her face when One seemed to appear out of thin air between the two.

"Whoa, whoa. Let's just take a moment and, uh, breathe and be nice and _not_ fight," he tried to neutralise the rapidly escalating situation, pointedly directing the “not” at the woman. The stranger helped exactly none, choosing to simply stand her ground and stare the man down. 

"Who's fucking side are you on?" Seven demanded. "Why are you defending her?"

"Oh, trust me, she can defend herself just fine," One tried to deflect. 

The short woman simply raised a brow from behind One's shoulder and Seven would've sworn on his own grave he saw a smirk.

"I won't waste my energy," she finally spoke. What was potentially more shocking than the fact that she spoke at all was that she had little to no accent. No regionality to pinpoint whatsoever. _Some real robotic, uncanny valley shit_ , _like a default voicemail message,_ One had once said to her after their first meeting. "We don't need to be friends- I don't _want_ to be friends. My only concern is the job."

"Thank you!" One exclaimed, looking around at the team with exasperation. "Finally someone who understands."

"You do your part and then you can fuck right off."

"Okay that part less so."

Seven was incensed. "You cannot _seriously_ want this asshole on the team. She’s a fucking liability!"

"You don't have a choice," she cut in before One could get another word out. "You want this shit to work? This shit don't work without me because you're operating on _my_ knowledge, _my_ plan and for the duration of this shitshow you're _my_ fucking team. If you don't wanna play ball, then fucking fine by me."

"Fine!" Seven shot right back.

"No! Absolutely not!" One shouted over the chaos, trying to regain control. "Seven, listen-"

"I fucking told you, it's Blaine!"

"Fuck! Blaine! Whatever! Listen to me!" He implored, grabbing the man by the shoulders. "Listen, there is a sick fuck out there running a smuggling operation that is selling thousands of kids like fucking cattle. These kids are abducted, sold and the fucker that buys them is doing _literally_ whatever they want. Little boys get fucking mutilated for entertainment. The girls rarely live through their first pregnancy, either of natural causes or literal execution.

"I have been working this for _years_ and I've not been able to touch this guy. He’s got the support of the fucking US military for fuck’s sake. Eight's former agency was the _only_ place with the means and motive to get as far as they did. We cannot do this without her. I'm asking you to put up with a relatively small amount of irritation for one fucking week so we can give this asshole what he deserves."

Seven just stood and fumed for a moment. Of course he wanted to put a kiddie fiddler ring leader in the ground but he was unwilling to concede to some stranger’s entitled attitude.

"Blaine, please," One could not believe he had to resort to begging (essentially) his own employee.

"Fine," the ex-Delta grit out. "But the second I feel like something ain't right I'm doing what needs to be done."

"Glad we've come to an agreement," Eight replied, cold as ever. "Let's get on with the show."

A thick manilla file appeared in the center of the table, seemingly out of nowhere, with a loud slap. Eight picked out the top sheet, a photo of a business man with greying hair and sharp angles.

"This is the aim of the game," she said. "This man is Charlie Dixon, CEO of Franz-Dixon Plastics. If there's a plastic shape in the world, they probably make it. They supply the entire US military and a couple others too. Used to be a respectable enough company but then Johann Franz died unexpectedly in ‘95 and all the extra cash flow got to Dixon's head.

"Dixon always had a taste for younger women. Call him the original Leonardo DiCaprio if you will, but his tastes got younger and younger to the point where it was reaching outside the limits of what was legal. No worries for Dixon though, with his extra money he can afford company as young as he likes. Before long, he had enough to share around so he made a boys club. We came close to proving his ties to the ring years back but he managed to slip away. They fudged the papers when they got wind of our case and tied us up with red tape and paperwork, and we didn’t have the funds to keep up.

“ _But_ , the smuggling slowed to a trickle for a bit while they laid low, and we kept them at arm's length until they were convinced we’d given up on the case. This time, we will have all bases covered and there’ll be nowhere to hide. From start to finish, this is going to happen in under six days, we leave in 48 hours.” With that, she unfolded a large floorplan from the file.

The first part of the plan was to hit the Shanghai branch of the FDP. It was a smaller property, relative to its sister locations and easier to infiltrate digitally thanks to the Great Firewall of China. The catch was that there were more guards, about fifteen to twenty per floor and with five floors in total, well, you do the maths. 

“They outsource their security from PPACC. These aren't minimum wage types on the ground. They're elite, hates your grandma, shoots their own guy at the first sign of treason types, so don’t slack off,” Eight said, and the venom in her voice did not go unnoticed.

The objective was a universal key card kept in the safe on the basement floor. One and Eight would be the ones to retrieve it, while the rest stayed in the stairwell, one man posted per floor, save for Seven who would be securing the roof and Five who would be remotely covering their tracks and watching the cameras. The issue was that the card needed to be swapped with a fake so that they don’t believe their security had been compromised, else they’d simply reset the keys.

Three raised his hand. “Why are we stealing a key card they can change? Doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Thankfully they can’t just log on and change it,” Eight explained. “There are five keys worldwide: Berlin, Dubai, Shanghai, Seoul and New York. It takes two used at the same location simultaneously to change security protocol. That can happen within nine hours between Dubai and Berlin, but that’s a two day business trip they don’t want to have to make if they really think they can get away with it.”

Three gave a nonchalant shrug, seemingly satisfied with the answer.

“We enter from the north east corner of the property. There’s a significant deadzone in their cameras from the fenceline to the roof in the north east corner. The last time we hit the property, we successfully planted a bug that has been causing interference in the south west stairwell. It’s miraculously still operational so we can just ramp up the interference for the job and they’ll be none the wiser for it. One man per floor in the stairwell. Prick,” she gestured at One, who rolled his eyes back at her, “is coming with me to the basement to retrieve the card.”

“We get in and out with as minimal contact as possible. It’s not likely we won’t raise the alarm but we can all pray, right?” _Was that humour?_ The Ghosts wondered. “If anyone is getting caught, it’s going to be me. I’ll be the last one out and come for anyone who gets snatched, guns blazing and all that gung ho revenge bullshit. It’ll be your job to put on a good show for the lads and scream at me to give you the key before I go off on my suicide run. If they catch me with the fake, we’re in the clear.”

It was Four who spoke up then, all soft and concerned. “I don’t know how I feel about leaving someone to die for bait.” 

His softness made something in her burn. She hated softness. Softness was a weakness. Softness got your team killed. “Suck it up and stick to the plan,” she said instead, retrieving a cigarette from her jacket pocket and lighting it. 

“Ah, well, actually,” One interrupted, “no one is going to die so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. PPACC protocol calls for capture over kill in all cases possible so their client has the choice of what to do. They’ll take Eight to a separate facility for holding and we can jump the van during transit.”

And that was the plan. Or the first part at least.

“So what went wrong last time?” Two piped up, professional curiosity piqued. “How come it’s going to work now?”

Eight took a deep drag of her cigarette and the smoke plumed from her mouth as she spoke. “Well, with any luck, none of you are working for the enemy.”

"No offence, but how am I meant to trust someone who can't even tell their own guy is playing for the other team?" Seven was understandably apprehensive. The whole situation was just becoming more and more suspicious.

"Do you have a question relevant to the mission or not?" she asked.

"I feel like it's pretty fucking relevant to the mission." But Eight was well on her way out of the room by the time he was halfway through the sentence, cigarette smoke and a bad taste in the air left in her wake.


	3. No Unnecessary Losses

It was weird to see One take a back seat. Eight, as promised, took the reigns on the operation though hardly anyone saw her at all. Occasionally she would be spotted with gear that she’d be lugging from point A to B, and she brushed off any attempts at assistance. Clear signs of a control freak. One was no help either. Any time anyone went to him for anything, he brushed them off like an inattentive father telling their child to ask their mother instead. With nothing to do and little to no communication from either leader (not that they recognised Eight as one), the team was rapidly becoming agitated under Eight’s thumb.

“I fucking hate her,” Five announed, stealing chips from Three and muching on them angrily. He looked to Two in astonishment, silently asking her to do something about the crime committed before their eyes but Two just shrugged. _Tough._

They were due to fly out in a couple of hours and One had uncharacteristically allowed them an hour off base before they were due to depart. 

“I hear you,” Seven chimed in. He’d been on edge as soon as he set eyes on Eight. “There’s something she’s not telling us, I just know it.”

“And why the fuck is One rolling over for her?” Five threw her hands up. “What does she have that he doesn’t?”

“Well she’s the one with all the plans right?” Four asked, playing devil’s advocate.

“Doesn’t mean we can’t do it without her,” Three argued. “She even said, it’s One’s tech that’s gonna open the safe. She doesn’t need to be there.”

So the verdict was in. No one was fond of Eight. 

“You know, she reminds me of my ex,” Four piped up, wagging a disapproving finger. “All cagey, keepin’ secrets and shit. I don’t fuck with that.”

“You know she’s a spy, right?” Two asked, brow raised, or what was considered a raised brow for her. “That’s our job.”

“You’re on her side?” Three asked, shocked.

“I’m not on any side,” she replied indifferently. “I’m just saying, I’ve had worse bosses.”

“Okay then, you’re a spy, you understand spy shit,” Three said. “What do you think?”

“I think she has a mission, and I think she’s doing her job,” she replied plainly. “We just have to wait to see what that is.”

“What, you can’t tell if she’s lying to us?” He asked.

Wrong move, because Two was deeply offended by that. “Just because I listened to someone talk for ten minutes doesn’t mean I can read their mind!” she huffed. “The only thing we can do is trust One. We can figure it out if it goes wrong.”

“Well I think they’re banging,” Four offered helpfully. “I think they’re banging and she’s got him pussy whipped and then she’s gonna stab him in the back,” miming a violent backstab with a suspicious amount of confidence which was only met with odd looks. “What? Just speakin’ from experience.”

But Two was right, there was nothing to do but trust One had a plan at least fifty percent more baked than the plot in Florence. Though it did nothing to stop them bitching through the Californian winter breeze the whole way to the plane, mild as it was.

Four, in particular, was properly hating the winter now, despite the fact that it was the equivalent of a brisk autumn day back home. Ever since his shoulder got dislocated on the boat in Turgistan, it hadn’t been the same. Played up every time he felt a slight chill. Five said it was probably just a mild nerve injury, nothing functionally wrong but an understandable irritation that may or may not go away. _It’s just a waiting game, unfortunately_ , she’d told him. In the cold, it annoyed him to no end. It was like a burning itch he couldn’t scratch and icy pin pricks at the same time. 

Though as he sat in his seat, rolling his shoulder, rubbing at it, trying just about anything to get it to stop bugging him, it seemed like it was never going to go away. 

“Hey,” a voice called his attention from the aisle. It was Eight, arm outstretched and offering a disposable heat pack to him. “Nerve pain?” she asked simply, voice low as to not wake the others on the overnight flight.

He took the pack from her with some hesitancy. “Yeah, Five said something like that.”

She looked upon him for a moment with deep consideration, her brow furrowing ever so slightly. “I’ll get her stocked up on some things for you. Sorry I didn’t know sooner.” She dropped the conversation there and made her way to the cockpit, leaving Four somewhat bewildered. It was a complete 180 on the person they'd met two days prior. The person who was so unforthcoming about critical details just because they were personal to her, who said they could fuck off as soon as they were done with their job and for the last two days had not spoken to a single person besides One (who she was frankly rubbing off onto, as if the guy wasn't enough of a prick to begin with) was here giving a shit about someone's booboo? Shit was not adding up.

But he knew better than to trust one kind gesture. His ex had done the same shit back when things were good and she ended up letting him fall (as far as she was concerned) to his death. 

No, he reminded himself that he knew better and to trust his gut. But for now, the material of the heat pack was soft against his bare skin and the warmth that radiated through his bones settled the itch and he could finally get a decent moment's rest.

Shanghai greeted the team with a brutal and biting winter wind. The abandoned farm plot they’d landed in was frozen over, the ground crunched like broken glass and the air was prickly to breathe. Two shiny, new but unremarkable, black SUVs, waited for them in the old barn. Eight had assured the team that they belonged to her and that they were for all intents and purposes as untraceable as one could get in the great surveillance state of the People's Republic of China. Eight split the group between the cars, she and One took one with all the gear, the rest into the other.

Seven was quick to ask questions as soon as the doors were closed. “So what was it like spending fourteen straight hours in the same place as the new chick?”

The group looked to each other in confusion then back to him. “We thought she was in the cockpit with you guys?” Three spoke for the group. “I didn’t see her much besides when she walked through a couple times to get things. What about you, mami?”

Two rolled her eyes at the pet name but did nothing to stop him. “No, didn’t see her much. I think she’s avoiding us.”

“Well no duh. If I started a fight with everyone then had to get on a plane with them, I’d be hiding too,” Five’s voice was laced with disdain.

“No, I think she’s trying to avoid losing people,” Two was quick to correct. “Can’t lose somebody if you don’t know them, you know?”

“Easy for her to say,” Seven scoffed from the driver’s seat, putting the car into gear. Ahead, One and Eight had finally taken off to lead the way. “Look, I know what it’s like to lose a soldier, but this isn’t the way to go about it. You got to look out for your own men.”

“That’s great and all,” Four interupted, “but where the hell was she then? Can’t’ve gotten off the plane.”

“There’s a crew and storage compartment between the cabin and bar, she must’ve been there,” Two supplied helpfully.

“That’s a lot of trouble to go to just to not talk to anyone,” Three muttered. “That thing is smaller than the toilet.”

They mustered and geared up in a terse silence, the whole group was on edge. Everyone save for Eight, who seemed entirely unphased by the tension. Finally, it was her who broke the silence.

“I understand none of you like me,” she opened, voice hushed to avoid unwanted attention. One noted that it was a phenomenal ice-breaker, “and I don’t have an issue with that. Whether you like me or not, I need your full dedication until we’re out of there. Remember your role. Remember our goal. I will not tolerate unnecessary losses but the mission outweighs the man, _any_ one of us. In the event that I am left behind as bait, you will proceed without me. In the equally likely event that extraction fails, you _will_ proceed without me. Clear?”

“Clear,” was the quietly chorused reply.

“Five stays here as our eyes, we won’t be able to see ahead, but she will. I’ll lead with Four into the complex and secure the roof before everyone else follows. Seven stays on the roof and keeps our exit secure, then Two and Three are with me. We clear that top floor to the stairwell, _no fucking guns_. Everyone else, you know your post in the stairwell. Stay off the comms, do not speak, if you can manage it, do not breathe. I don’t want a single fucking sound in that stairwell. The Prick and I will hit the safe. With any luck, we’ll make the call and we can get the fuck out before someone notices. Otherwise we all know the backup plans. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Seven was starting to feel like he never left the military.

Eight led them from where their vans were parked to the property, maybe a ten minute walk away, directly south. It all went according to the plan she’d just laid out. She and Four laid the path into the property, scaling what needed to be scaled before dropping ropes for ease of access. Then she, Two and Three disappeared into the top floor through a sky light, Three appearing five minutes later, spattered with blood but victorious, to give them the all clear. They slunk across the floor to their posts in the stairwell, each with an ear pressed to a door to check for signs of approach. None dared to breathe a word or even have a thought too loudly while One and Eight snuck through the basement to the safe.

Of course, that was where things started to go awry. 

“Shit!” Five’s voice crackled over the comms. “Movement on the top floor. I think he’s noticed people are missing.”

To make matters worse, One and Eight still hadn’t returned from the safe, ten minutes overtime. 

“Where the fuck are they?” Three asked over the comms.

Two was an angry blur of blonde hair as she stuck her head into the middle of the stairwell to glare at her idiot partner.

“Stay off the comms!” Five scolded him for her.

“You had one fucking job!” One’s voice hissed right after. “We’re coming, hold onto your fucking panties.”

“There’s two groups of movement!” Five called over the comms. “Top floor and first floor! Four and Three, watch your doors!”   
  


As if things couldn’t get worse, an alarm started to sound, immediately followed by One and Eight bursting through the bottom floor of the stairwell.

“Fucking move!” One yelled, kicking everyone into high gear.

“You’re in for a fight,” Five warned as they ascended the stairwell. “They’re all gathering on the top floor.”

“I’ll take point. Two, I want you on our six.” Eight called out as she and One reached the top landing. “Five, are we clear on the other side of the door?”

“No, they’re coming your way,” she replied. “You’re about to get contact from the first floor too.”

Eight kept calling shots. “We wait on them to make contact. Fight our way to the exit. Keep it tight. Two, shoot anything that comes through that first floor door until we're the fuck out of here.”

And with that, the aforementioned door bust open. Two was quicker on the trigger, though, putting guys down faster than they could make it in. Reacting to the sound, a guard burst through the top floor door as well, met with a direct headshot from Eight.

“Go!” she called as she moved forward, shooting as she went. It was easy when you were on enemy territory, anything that moved was trying to kill you and therefore she could shoot indiscriminately. So she went full John Wick. Anything that approached her got double tapped and a headshot for good measure. Excessive and wasteful, yes, but more efficient than having to double check.

It was barely 150 feet from the stairwell to the skylight but it felt like it took forever to make it across. Guards appeared in an unrelenting onslaught and the Ghosts could barely reload fast enough to keep up with all of them. Around them the deafening thunder of gunfire, the ringing of casings hitting the tile floor, the unmistakable burn of gunpowder. 

Finally, they reached the skylight. Two and Eight continued covering as Four boosted whoever he could through the opening. The PPACC guards slowly closed in as the ones left standing on the floor, their ability to keep the men at bay dwindled with their numbers.

Suddenly a yelp caught Eight’s attention, just as Two pushed her way up out of the skylight. Four was struggling to fight off a goon who had caught him by the hair. She swivelled and put the butt of her rifle into the back of the guy’s head. She had no time to see if it’d done enough as she swivelled back to continue shooting.

Behind her, she could hear the team calling out to him to take their hands, so he must’ve gotten free. The sigh of relief that she breathed turned into frustration as the dull click of her gun indicated she’d run out of ammunition. The goons noticed too as the last few remaining rushed her.

With Four safely through the roof, they stuck to the plan, calling out to her from the roof to throw them the card and she dutifully ignored them. It meant, however, that they had to watch some true carnage unfold before they could leave. She used the inertia from one particular man who lunged at her to swing his body into a pipe fixed to the wall, breaking his neck on it with an almighty crack. On another’s face she broke the handle of her gun. She let out a guttural cry, and not for effort or exhaustion. She was _angry_. Truthfully, it was the first real sign of emotion that they’d seen from the woman.

She continued to fight, teeth bared and eyes wild, wielding a relatively pathetic knife in one hand. She swung and missed and got a bullet in the calf for her efforts and, down on one knee, another goon clubbed her across the back of the head, putting her down for the count.

So One called it and they retreated. They’d have to attempt an extraction later.


	4. Top Tier Espionage

The ghosts mustered back at the vans some ten minutes later to assess their situation. They were at least another man down, that was for certain. Two had gotten shot and was in a bad way.

“Now this is a shit ton of blood,” she’d said to Five before collapsing.

So Five cussed out her unconscious body and commandeered Three’s assistance to get the limp ex-CIA into the van and laid out so she could treat her. Five was getting deja vu and she wasn’t happy about it.

“I don’t have enough supplies in my med kit,” she told One as she scrambled to get her friend patched up in the glow of Three’s flashlight. “We really need a hospital this time.”

“Check Eight’s kit first.” One’s reply was curt and his voice was tight with anxiety. “I don’t want to leave until we have eyes on Eight if we can.”

“Don’t just stand there then!” she hissed at the man, up to the wrists in blood already. “Get the fucking kit!”

One didn’t need to be told twice.

Five was shocked when One delivered a tub stocked with what could supply a small aid station. There was blood, plasma, a wide range of painkillers and anaesthetics, an endless selection of tools- everything she needed to perform what looked like could be a fairly invasive surgery on Two. With Nurse Three at the ready, Two was in good hands.

Five declared Two stable for now, so One made the call to stay where they were and lay low. With any luck the dense tree cover in the relatively rural area would give them enough cover to allow them to continue remotely monitoring the situation in the complex. 

“So why are we bothering with extraction?” Seven asked One from their lookout. “I thought you were happy to leave a guy behind.”

“I am,” One replied, in his irritatingly cocky voice, “but Eight knows the plan better than I do and trust me, it’s a lot more fucking complicated than you think it is.”

“So you’re doing it for your own convenience?” the sniper quipped.

One was, for reasons unknown, becoming agitated and defensive. “Shut up and watch the fucking complex.”

“Alright bossman.”

It was three whole hours later when a single vehicle emerged from the complex. Four, who had been on monitor duty, confirmed it was the one they were transporting Eight in. The current plan of attack was to let Seven disable the vehicle and as many people as possible, Then One and Three would go in for any stragglers and get Eight out. 

“Wait til they’re out of camera range, then pull the trigger!” One yelled at Seven as he and Three raced down the slope towards the complex.

Seven’s mark was good and true. The car had flats and a dead driver in seconds, leading the car to swerve and crash into the nearest tree. The men who flooded out of the vehicle brandished their guns, looking for an invisible enemy in the blinding, dawning light, and were quickly picked off one by one. By the time One and Three made it down, there were only two goons remaining which they made quick work of. Eight was unconscious, lying on the floor of the van so Three hauled her over his shoulder and carried her back like a sack of potatoes.

Meanwhile One loaded the scattered bodies into the van and disposed of the vehicle in a nearby bog. With any luck, the vanished vehicle would buy the Ghosts a bit of extra time.

An hour later, they were back on the plane and headed to Dubai for the next stage: Espionage. Now that they wielded the key, they could access every door in every FDP complex in the world. In Dubai, one particular office held Mr Dixon’s personal “me time” stash.

Five was suitably put off. “I feel like I’m going to puke.”

“Well do it now and not when we land because _we_ ,” One gestured between the two of them, “will be posing as wealthy married friends of Mr Dixon and touring a new processing unit. We make nice, go off, find the hard drive. Go up for lunch on the top balcony, stop for a photo and then oopsie, dropped your bag over the railing. Four and Three will be on retrieval below, posing as window cleaners, then rendezvous with Seven at the dock, meet back at the plane, Bob’s your uncle.”

“What about me?” Two piped up. “What am I doing?”

“You just got shot so you’re on babysitting duty,” One told her in his trademark condescending voice, gesturing to Eight who was still unconscious.

“She doesn’t need a babysitter!” she shot back angrily. 

“Yes she does!” They were starting to sound like squabbling school children. “Besides, if she doesn’t wake up in time or she’s not completely with us when she does, I’ll need you on the comms feeding us info.”

Two scowled but said nothing else. At least she’d kind of have a real job.

Eight woke some time after they’d landed in Dubai. A crust on her lids fought her eyes as they opened and there was the distinct taste of cottonmouth on her tongue. She stood carefully, leaning heavily against the irritatingly concave walls of the empty plane, gently holding her head like it would fall off without the support. Her head spun as her stomach churned, then bubbled, and she madly scrambled for the bathroom to wretch bile into the bowl.

“Eight’s awake,” she heard Two say. “I just heard her throw up.”

Eight’s brain finally started ticking and figured she must’ve been sedated with something she didn’t agree with, usually a PCP derivative like ket. Either way, she was grateful to have woken up at all. Finally done with emptying her guts, she rinsed her mouth and splashed her face at the sink before limping to the cockpit.

“Hey,” Two greeted casually, “how are you feeling?”

“Well enough,” she nodded weakly, flopping into the available seat. “What’s the mission status?”

“Three, Four and Seven are in place. One and Five are waiting to be seen for the tour.”

Another weak nod. Her eyes were already closed as she leaned back onto the headrest.

Two watched with a skeptical eye. “Are you sure you don’t want to rest? I’ve got it.”

Eyes still closed, Eight dismissed the question with a lethargic wave of her hand. “I’m fine, it’s just withdrawal. You have an extra headset?” she asked instead.

Two handed her what she asked for and said nothing more. She trusted that her colleague knew her limits and she’d handle herself. Like she’d said earlier to One, Eight didn’t need a babysitter.

“Eight’s here,” Two informed the rest over the comms.

“How you feelin’?” Seven’s voice crackled through.

“Don’t worry about me,” was her curt answer, “focus on the mission.”

“Who said I was worried?” was the salty reply.

Eight said nothing. In fact, it didn’t seem to bother her at all. It seemed to bother her so little, in fact, that she appeared to have simply gone back to sleep.

Finally, the guide showed up, a Miss Maryam Khan, who apologised profusely for keeping them waiting.

As Two scrambled through papers, Eight piped up, rising from the dead. “It’s the building manager’s daughter. She doesn’t do much besides walk people around so keep it simple or she’ll get flustered.”

“Thank you, Miss Khan,” One said instead, his now trademark Scottish accent on full display. “It was very kind of you to give us a tour on such short notice.” The ghosts had figured by now that it was the only accent he could do with any kind of consistency and it was an endless source of mockery. 

As One had casual his back and fourth with Miss Khan, Eight watched their buttoncam streams intently. They climbed a small flight of stairs in a large hall, then up an elevator to the twenty third floor. The three held up some inane chatter over the local elevator music. The elevator dinged and Ms Kahn directed them to the room to begin the tour. 

It was life-sappingly boring, some new way of melting plastic faster, yet Eight could not be torn from the screens, eyes and ears fixed on their every movement.

An excruciating hour later, they left the room. Miss Khan offered to see them out.

“Oh, I’m feeling a little peckish, actually.” Five’s prim and proper English accent was spot on. “I heard you have a little cafe on one of the upper levels?”

“Oh, yes, but it’s by reservation only,” Miss Khan explained. “Otherwise the walk-in fee can be quite substantial.”

Five giggled. “Oh, that’s no worry. My darling Richard will cover it, won’t you dearest?”

You could almost hear One’s strained smile. “Anything for you, my love.”

“Of course,” Miss Khan sounded apologetic for assuming, “would you like me to walk you there?”

“Oh, there’s no need,” One insisted. “We wanted to have a bit of a wander and see what our old mate Charlie’s been up to. He’s a busy man, hard to catch up with him.”

“Of course,” Miss Khan was starting to sound like a parrot. “If you need me, please ask any of the staff and they will fetch me for you. The cafe is on the sixtieth floor, I hope you enjoy your meal.”

Finally, they were free of their chaperone.

“The Regional Director’s office is on the 76th floor,” Eight told them as they hopped back in the elevator, “Dixon’s Dubai office is the floor above, 77, his lucky number. Dixon’s a paranoid, though, so he’s rigged his front door to notify him any time someone opens it. Go through the director’s office, there’s a private staircase in the south west corner you can use to get in. The lock is secured from Dixon’s side, but the Prick should have some fancy magnet magic to get you through. From there you’re on your own but I’d look around his sleeping quarters.”

“Can’t say I wanna be anywhere near where that bastard’s sleeping,” One muttered as he swiped the stolen master key over the reader, which chirped back happily. “Two, I hope you’ve got that feed looped.”

The Frenchwoman scoffed, _“Il pense que j'suis une amateure.”_

Eight couldn’t hide the snort that escaped. _“T'attendais quoi? Cest un homme blanc et riche.”_

One was making unintelligible sounds of offense. “Are you talking smack about me to each other, _in my ear?_ ”

“The feed has been looping for hours, _Fils de pute!”_ Two shot back.

“I know what that one means!” One hissed back, “And that’s a very mean thing to say!”

Five, the unfortunate soul, sighed heavily over their bickering.

They arrived at the 76th floor and put their best performances back on. They greeted a maid who was on her way out of the office as they walked up and pretended to be lost and looking for someone on another floor. The maid gave fantastic directions and seemed completely fooled. They thanked her and made to follow her directions, turning back immediately as soon as she’d rounded the corner. 

The master key worked again with no issues, the reader singing its annoying happy chirp. Exactly as Eight had said, the staircase was in the northwest corner, hidden within a large false cabinet. One’s tech did its magic, and then suddenly, they were in the Big Bad Lair.

It was like walking onto the set of Suits, only you knew the guy who sat in the annoying, pompous chair was a real guy and he loves to touch kids. It really threw off the vibe of the whole place.

One and Five made quick work of the office, rifling through desks and drawers, nightstands and under mattresses. Five found a contact book tucked behind a false cushion of the headboard while One found a large hard drive stowed away in the false bottom of a drawer.

“I got it!” he whisper-shouted across the floor.

“I found a contact book!” Five whisper-shouted back.

They took care to handle them delicately as they put them into ziplock bags with their latex gloves, before placing them into Five’s obnoxiously large fake designer handbag. 

“Is there anything else you think we might find here?” One asked Eight.

“Besides taking the entire computer, no,” she replied, having not taken her eyes off their buttoncams the entire time. “Get out of there before someone hears you, the hard drive and contact book are enough.”

“Gotcha,” was the over and out. 

They managed to sneak back out of the Regional Director’s office easily enough since the floor was pretty much abandoned when they left. A minute of horrid elevator music later, they arrived at the 60th floor. The waiters scurried about, all but laying tissues on the ground where they would walk to serve their every need. One insisted they eat on the balcony, despite the window cleaners being rigged up from the railings.

“No, we must sit in the sun,” One argued with an insistent waiter, “my love missed her tanning appointment to come see our friend’s latest gizmo so she’s got some catching up to do.”

The waiter withered away at the bizarre explanation, “Yes, sir. Of course. We’ll prepare a table for you immediately.”

One just waved him off like the rich, pompous dickhead he was deep inside, and pulled a menu to peruse with his “wife”.

They made a good show of the small talk.

“Oh darling, the Roasted Shredded Tortilla with Seasonal Salad and Aged Artisanal Cheese sounds delightful!” Five said.

“Is that nachos?” Three’s voice came through the comms. “That just sounds like fuckin’ nachos!”

“Oh I don’t know, dear,” One sounded unsure, “I’m leaning towards the Wood Fired Brick Oven Yeasted Flatbread. I like the one topped with hand crushed herbal tomato puree, fondue and slices of aged deli meats.”

“Is he takin’ the piss?” Four asked Three. “That’s a pepperoni pizza!”

“You should be careful with that, darling,” Five’s voice was sweet with concern, “I think you ought to watch the fats. Oh! They have a French section. Maybe we should try the _Nouilles dans le fromage fondu et le lait_.”

“Mac and Cheese,” Two supplied helpfully.

“What about the _Poisson et frites Anglais tradionelle_?” One asked Five, but really he was asking Two.

“Fish and chips.”

“Fuuuuuuuuck,” Four sounded like his life force was waning with each menu listing. “I’m starvin’! Can you put something in a takeaway box in your bag before you send it down?”

“Yeah!” Three chimed in. “We’ve been cleaning windows for fuckin’ hours!”

One, in no position to actually argue back, just continued listing items.

“You know what, I’m going to get the _Le poulet frit et les gaufres_ ,” he decided.

“I’m leaning towards the Roasted Legume Pâté and Seasonal Berry Compote on Sourdough.”

So One ate his chicken and waffles and Five had her PB&J sandwich on the balcony in the sun and they tried not to laugh as the team heckled them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French in this chapter:  
> Il pense que j'suis une amateure = He think's I'm an amateur  
> T'attendais quoi? Cest un homme blanc et riche = He's a rich, white man. What are you expecting?  
> Fils de pute = Son of a bitch
> 
> French translations by my wonderful friend Kirjava3456airbender <3 I love you forever.  
> Pls consider checking out their work!


	5. Shaking Tails

Lunch eventually ended and the plan continued to play out. 

Five activated the internal pressurized padding in her bag, then harassed a waiter for a photo. She and One posed along the balcony, making sure to make a fuss about “my new Valentino bag _needs_ to be in the shot. She’s beautiful!” as she perched it dangerously on the balcony railing. Of course, it went exactly as hoped.

“My new Valentino!” Five made a good show of shrieking and carrying on when One “accidentally” knocked it over the edge as they reposed. Twenty floors below, Three successfully caught the flying package and had it shoved into Four’s backpack before the waiter could get their head over the balcony to see what had happened.

“It went into those bushes there!” Four called up, pointing in a generally unhelpful direction.

So Five pretended to be a princess and cussed One out because it was “all his fault”, storming through the building and letting One follow her.

“Don’t you want to look for your handbag, sweet heart?” he asked her when she snatched the car keys from the petrified valet in the lobby.

“Forget it! It’ll be ruined by now,” she harrumphed, stomping to the sleek, silver supercar and dumping herself in the passenger seat.

A very well executed tantrum, if Eight ever heard one.

More importantly, it provided a very good distraction for Three and Four, who were then able to sneak around their commotion to the loading bay.

Four twiddled his thumbs as he waited for Three to sign them out at the security office.

“Hey!” a security guard called out at him, “I don’t remember you checking out that bag!”

“Uh, your colleague must’ve done it,” he fibbed.

The guy hmp’d at him, then raised his hand to his radio, ready to call a colleague for something. Four didn’t stick around to find out what, instead making a mad sprint for the loading dock gates.

“I’m making a dash for it! Headed east!” he called into the comms, ducking and diving through traffic. Behind him he could hear the kerfuffle and commotion of a chase. “I’ve got tails though.” No matter, no one was faster or more agile than he was, he was sure of it.

“Take the first right,” Eight’s voice came through his earpiece. “I’ll navigate you.”

He was grateful to have her guidance. “Roger.”

“How are those tails?” she asked.

He peeked over his shoulder then picked up the pace. “Five or six guys on foot, they looked like they’ve got guns.”

Eight hummed thoughtfully. “There should be a construction site coming up on your left. It’s supposed to be a huge shopping mall. Can you lose them in there?” 

“Yeah.” His heart felt like it was about to beat out of his chest.

“Do what you gotta go,” she told him. “Check in when you’ve shaken them off. Prick-”

“How hard is it for you to just call me One?” One cut her off angrily.

“Can you circle back to the fucking construction site or not?” her clinical tone gone. The ghosts had started to notice that any decrease in efficiency, even in conversation, made her irritable.

“Nope,” Five replied, “pretty sure we’ve got tails of our own.”

Eight stood up, tearing her headset off and patching herself in with one of the long distance earpieces instead.

“Where are you going?” Two asked.

“I’m commandeering a vehicle to grab Four,” she said, checking a handgun for ammunition then stowing it in the waistband of her leggings, concealed by her jacket. “There’s no fucking way I’m losing that hard drive. Check in on Three, we haven’t heard from him yet,” and then she was out the door

“Three, come in.”

“Hey mami,” was his carefree reply.

Two rolled her eyes but was relieved that maybe he’d gotten away without any hassle. “What’s your status? Are you on route to rendezvous with Seven at the dock?”

“Just leaving now. The security guys were giving me a hard time,” he said sounding supremely cocky.

“What did you do?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Oh, I just pushed them around a bit, you know me,” he almost sounded like he was laughing. “Seven, I’ll see you at the dock in five.”

“Copy,” Seven had been happily enjoying the Dubai sun on the clear and calm waters. “See you in five.”

Meanwhile, Eight had found a motorbike at a nearby gas station with an inattentive owner who’d left the keys in. She simply hopped on and rode it away as he stood to the side, watching soft core porn on his phone and touching himself over his jeans in the open like it didn’t make him a fucking creep. The idiot didn’t even notice until she was halfway down the street.

“Four, status update,” she barked over the wind.

“I’ve lost three of them!” he sounded proud.

“I’ll be at the west corner of the site in seven minutes, is that long enough for you to shake the rest?”

“Yeah! Yeah!” between huffs and puffs.

“One, how’s your tail?” she heard Two ask after.

“We have to make a detour,” One replied, his voice was heavy with resignation.

“We’re going shopping!” Five sounded cheery.

“What?” Two was confused.

“We gotta maintain cover,” One explained. “If they see we’re actually just insanely rich assholes we’ll convince them to leave us alone. Or at least we can shake them off in the mall.”

“Can you buy me a new belt?” Three was laughing over the roar of a motorboat.

“I need a leather jacket!” Seven chimed in.

Two thought the pair of them were having way too much fun for what else was going on. She certainly didn’t miss managing operations like these. “Keep the chatter down!” she barked at them. “Some of us are trying to work!”

For a few minutes after, the only sounds that came through the comms were One and Five’s shuffling around, Four’s panting and the roar of a motorbike that was being pushed well past its limits.

“Four! Update!” Eight called out.

“Got two left! I can’t shake ‘em!” he sounded exhausted.

“Get down to the ground floor, I’ll give you a hand,” she told him, taking a hard corner and beelining it for the gates that were left open. 

The site was a mess, to be sure. Concrete blocks, rebar and tools littered around with no clear organisation. The ground was bare dirt and seemed to be comprised entirely of potholes. With all her skill and no small amount of luck, Eight managed to maneuver her way through to the base of the building.

“I see you! Right above ya!” Four called out.

She dared a glance upwards and indeed spotted the man five or so floors up zipping through the half built foundation with two mean looking guys in hot pursuit. She looked around, trying to see if there was anything she could spot that might make his escape any easier.

“Keep going in your heading towards the corner," she directed him. "There’s a truck-mounted crane right outside. The arm is pointed away from the corner so you’ll need to jump out about ten meters to your left to hit the top of that arm. It’ll be about a two storey drop. I’ll be there.”

“Gotcha!” he called back.

Eight raced ahead, anxious to get out as quickly as possible. She glanced back, the stress getting the better of her, just in time to see part of a floor give way just as she heard Four yelp in her ear.

“Four!” she called out.

The sound of rubble continued to fall in her ear but nothing from the freerunner.

“What’s going on?” she heard someone in her ear but she ignored it, the adrenaline kicking her brain into high gear.

“Fuck!” she cussed, screeching to a stop by the crane and dumping the bike against the body of the truck. She clambered up the arm, ignoring the hot burn in her calf from her wound which was no doubt reopened and gushing. The floor she climbed onto was clear, but a short distance ahead she could see dust rising, so she assumed Four must’ve fallen through there.

She approached the holes with caution, eyes and gun trained on what she could see of the floor above. One man stuck his head over the jagged edge and she thanked him with lead between the eyes. She heard some kind of shuffling below and spotted the corner of a foot taking off.

Without thinking she jumped through the hole, taking care not to land directly on Four, before taking off after the guy. Her calf screamed and her heart felt like it was about to give out but she pushed and pushed.

No fucking way, _no fucking way_ was she going to lose now. Not right now. Not when it was so close she could fucking taste it on her fucking tongue. Not when that fucking bastard Dixon was finally going to get what he gave.

The man ahead turned back, pointing a gun in her direction.

She dove and rolled as it sounded, the shot narrowly missing her as she ducked behind a conveniently placed concrete block. Another shot pinged off the block and she righted herself, trusting her instincts to know here to shoot. 

She ducked over the block and pulled the trigger twice with a steady breath, taking care to avoid Four’s backpack which was thankfully bright green. She caught the man in the thigh and gut, giving her the chance to land a headshot as he collapsed.

She tried to steady her breath as she picked the backpack out of the man’s arms. Her ears rang and her heart was beating so fast she thought she might puke. The adrenaline still pumping in her veins gave her tremors and the pain in her calf flared halfway up her side. She stumbled when she turned back to Four, just managing to catch herself before she put her teeth into the unfinished concrete.

“Eight! What’s going on!” Two’s voice suddenly caught her attention. She must’ve been yelling at her this whole time.

“Hostiles eliminated,” she was blunt. “Be at the plane in twenty minutes.”

Things were starting to unblur for Four, a distinct ringing in his head like a persistent electronic mosquito, the smell of concrete dust and cigarette butts. He breathed and failed, a weak cough taking its place. The taste of copper burst in his mouth. _Blood. I’m bleeding._ Someone was talking somewhere, a faint voice in his ear somewhere past the incessant ringing. Voices? 

He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the world to stop spinning. It went a bit black, then a bit white, so he stopped trying that.

Then suddenly Eight was there, hovering above him. She held his backpack in one hand, a gun in the other and her normally perfect hair was a mess.

“You’re here,” he said dumbly.

“Wasn’t far to reach you,” she said simply. “I’ve got some bad news.”

Four's head fell backwards. _Just give it to me,_ he thought.

“You’ve been speared through the thigh with a bit of copper tubing,” her voice was clinical, like she was talking about the common cold. “Looks like it’s missed anything important if you haven’t bled out yet, so things are looking up. The more bad news is I need to lift you off it if we want to get outta here and that’s going to hurt a lot.” 

It was the worst possible news. A freerunner who couldn’t fucking run. He pounded his fist against a piece of concrete wall in the rubble by him, stifling a cry of frustration.

A loud clap in his face snapped him back to reality.

“Hey!” Eight shouted, inches away from his face. “We don’t have time for crying right now. Do it when we get back to base,” she said, tucking her arms under his shoulders and the crook of his knees. “You ready?” she asked, then deadlifted him off the tubing before he could answer.

He screamed as the pipe released from flesh, the feeling red hot against the cool air. Eight paid him no mind, climbing out of the rubble like the eleven stone man in her arms was nothing more than an awkwardly shaped parcel. She clambered out and set him down on a flat surface, taking off her jacket then her shirt, tearing the latter in thirds. She wadded two pieces and pressed them into his hands, then moved his hands to both sides of his wound, silently, but firmly, directing him on what he needed to do. _Apply pressure._ With the final piece, she bound it over his hands, then slipped them out leaving the wadding where it needed to be. He cried out again when she yanked the fabric tight.

“Okay, that’ll hold for a while,” she told him as she slipped her jacket back on, zipping it up the whole way to fight the chill that her sports bra was doing nothing to fend off. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“There was blood in my mouth, dunno why,” he managed to grimace. 

She roughly handled his jaw, forcing his mouth open and tilting his head back to look for any damage. “Nothing to worry about,” was the verdict. “You bit your tongue pretty bad so eating will be a bitch for a while but it’ll heal before long. We’ll get Five to look at your teeth when we have the time. Ready to give walking a go?”

“Can you just carry me the whole way home?” he asked and Eight was glad to know his cheek hadn’t left him.

So she rolled her eyes and tucked an arm under his to help him to his feet. “Come on, we’ve got nonces to kill.”


	6. Thinking a Lot

Eight, for reasons unknown, was sour and moody as soon as she got back to the plane. She helped Four onto the plane and while everyone fussed over him, guessing at what to do since One and Five still weren’t back, she slipped out.

Seven was the first to notice she was gone, sticking his head out the plane to see if he could spot her. She’d found a dirty, beaten up plastic chair by a tree in the dirt patch that they’d landed in, head hung, cigarette in hand and her bad leg bouncing furiously with anxiety, creating a muddy red patch under foot from the blood that trickled out from her reopened wound.

He approached her cautiously, wary of the possibility of her snapping at him again.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

She looked up and met his eyes and he was taken aback by how haggard she suddenly seemed. Her eyes were bruised from fatigue, her cheeks gaunt with stress and looking three shades paler than he remembered. “I’m fine. Just thinking,” she was curt but her voice was soft. _Vulnerable_ , he dared to think.

He looked around and spotted an equally gross and battered plastic chair a small distance away. He jogged over to fetch it and dragged it to join Eight under the shade of the shabby tree. Eight had just finished her cigarette, crushing it with her foot in her mud spot before fishing out her pack from her jacket. She picked out another stick, popping it between her lips before offering the open pack to Seven.

He shook his head no, “Nah, I quit a couple years ago.”

She put the pack away and lit the cigarette between her lips. “Respect. I quit for like five years and then this shit happened and now I’m back to like a freakin’ pack a day.” She rubbed at her eye with the heel of her hand and didn’t seem to give a shit that she’d just smeared dirt all over her face. “Hate to think of the shit I’ll eat when I try to quit again.”

Seven was taken aback by how open she was all of a sudden, but he wasn’t about to let the look a gift horse in the mouth. “I went through a box of twinkies the first week I went cold turkey. I thought I was going to bleed corn syrup by the end of it,” he laughed.

She snorted, and that really stroked his ego to know he was probably the first in the group to make her laugh. Or laugh-adjacent anyway.

“I had this job in Adelaide, Australia for about a month,” she revealed. “The group I was infiltrating were all strongly against smoking so I had to go cold turkey to get them to like me. They have this stuff there called Milo. It’s like a malted chocolate powder thing to make drinks but I was shovelling it in my mouth by the spoonful. Went through two whole kilo tins by the time I was extracted,” she took another drag. “Not my proudest moment.”

A moment of comfortable, contemplative silence passed between them before Seven spoke again. “I need a workout partner when we get to base. You game?” he asked. 

She glanced over at him, a wary side-eyed look, and he was sure he’d overstepped but she surprised him. “I’ll think about it.”

One and Five finally returned, two hours behind schedule with a boot full of goodies. Five had taken full advantage of their cover and got some high end skincare and a _real_ Valentino bag for herself, she’d found a gorgeous, antique recipe chest for Seven, a Rip n’ Dip beanie in blue for Four, half the food court in takeaway containers for Three, a handmade, low profile, leather belt bag for Two, and One got himself a dinosaur skeleton Lego set “since we’re all being fucking children anyway.” Everyone poured over the gifts, save for Eight who was still chain smoking by the tree.

It was One who went to see her in the end, a small jewellery box in his hand. “We’re taking off soon,” he told her when he handed it over. “Didn’t know what to get you considering you don’t talk to anyone.”

She nodded her thanks silently, the cigarette dangling precariously from her lips as she opened her gift.

It was a watch. A minimal, numberless design on a broad, thin charcoal face with soft gold detailing and a black canvas strap. Eight would never admit it, but she was touched that they’d thought of her at all. “Thank you.”

“It’s fine,” One brushed her off. “Finish getting that cancer in your lungs and let’s go. And stop agitating your wound, Five’s gonna be pissed.”

Eight snorted, “Five’s always pissed.”

And pissed she was.

“What the fuck is this?” she all but screamed when she spotted Eight’s bloody leg, her black leggings wet from her shin down and dark red goop crusting at her ankle and all down the side of her sneakers.

Eight just sat herself down opposite from Four, where Five was still wrist deep in stitches. “I tore my stitches,” she said, like it wasn’t obvious.

“And you probably reopened the whole fucking wound too!” Five added angrily.

Eight just nodded along. She knew better than to argue with a doctor provoked. “Probably,” as she rolled up her pant leg, the wet material dripped red onto the carpet below.

Five muttered something in Spanish under her breath and went back to Four who seemed to be completely loopy on painkillers and laid comfortably across two seats. He was stripped out of his window washers’ overalls and left in his wife beater and dinosaur trunks.

“Hey, Eight,” he called her attention. “D’ya like my beanie?” He pulled down the fold to reveal that the cat patch was flipping her off.

“Yes, Four, it’s very nice,” she replied like she was entertaining a toddler as she unwound her soaked bandages. 

Four seemed pleased. “Five got it for me.”

“That was very nice of her.”

Five finished with Four and moved onto Eight. “You’re back to square one,” was the doctor’s assessment.

Eight nodded wearily. “I know.”

Five cleaned and flushed the wound and started on new stitches and Eight didn’t flinch a single time. “Should I bother telling you to keep off your leg?”

Eight sighed. “Probably not.”

“Well then, you know what my recommendation is.” Five rewrapped the wound and packed her stuff away, giving the woman some space to brood.

“Why don’t you like us, Eight?” Four piped up all of a sudden, pouty and glassy eyed.

“You’re fine colleagues,” she evaded the question.

“But you don’t _like_ us,” he insisted.

Eight kept tight lipped, unwilling to go on an endless loop with someone who was high as a kite. She worried that he might take it as an omission of guilt but he moved on pretty quick when it was clear she wasn’t going to play ball. 

“Y’know we had this other guy. He was a driver. You would’a liked _him_.”

“Maybe,” Eight still wasn’t budging, but Four plowed ahead anyway.

“He’s American Italian and like really, _really_ hot,” he gushed. 

Eight sighed, resigned but amused by Four’s account of what seemed like a crush. “Go on.”

Four giggled like a schoolgirl. “He always picked out these really sexy cars and he looked really good in them. And-and this one time we were doing this job in Sicily but we had some free time and he was walkin’ me around town because that’s where his family’s from and showin’ me everything.” And suddenly his mood dropped. “I miss him.”

“I’m sure you cared for him very much,” Eight’s voice was gentle for once, barely heard over the hiss and wheeze of the plane door closing and the engines starting up.

“I did,” Four looked like he was on the verge of tears. “We were like, best mates.”

Eight made it a personal policy not to lie to teammates which made situations like this difficult for her. She could lie out of her ass on a job and smooth things over in a second, but off the clock, she could never find anything meaningful to say. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said instead. A boring, and impersonal response and she kind of hated herself for it.

“It’s okay. We all knew what we were getting into when we joined up. I just didn’t expect to lose a mate so early on,” he said quietly. “Can’t imagine how many people you’ve lost if you’ve been doing this your whole life or whatever.”

Her team’s faces flashed behind her eyes, a memory of completing a difficult mission and celebrating with a case of beer she’d smuggled into the office. “Yeah, there’s been a couple good ones.”

“I’m sorry.” Four’s voice was soft with empathy.

“It’s fine. It’s just how things are.” Eight was anxious to move the conversation along. “You should sleep,” she suggested, over the roar and rumble of take off.

“Okay,” Four was surprisingly compliant and Eight figured it was the painkillers making him dozy. He yawned and rolled over and that seemed to be that.

She checked her new watch, admiring the design for a moment before actually taking in the time. From Dubai to New York, it should be a fourteen hour journey. Plenty of time to scan and transcribe all the pages of the little black book, back up those files, as well as the entire hard drive.

Save for the constant click-clack of her keyboard the plane ride was nearly silent for the next four hours. Occasionally Eight would hear romantic whispers between Three and Two or Five’s soft snores. She really did feel bad for stressing the doctor out as much as she did.

Finally she was finished transcribing the book and had an immediate pick up list of the first names to grab when they landed.

Eight was desperately trying to avoid doing what she had to do next. So she sat staring out the window at the endless expanse of the night sky, she studied the stitches of the leather seats, twiddled her thumbs, forwards, backwards, forwards again. She checked her watch again and realised she’d managed to lose a whole hour, even though that was exactly what she’d been trying to do. She cursed herself under her breath and ripped the hard drive out of Four’s backpack and plugged it into her laptop.

She sat frozen to the spot when the drive icon popped up on her desktop.

 _Come on!_ she chided herself. _This is what you’ve been working towards for years! People fucking died for this._

With shaky hands, she reached for her headphones and plugged them in. She wasn’t about to go broadcasting the filth for the whole plane to hear.

She opened the drive and her eyes were immediately singed by what she saw. Video upon video of the absolute most horrific crime she could imagine and her stomach churned angrily. She set the entire drive to upload, but continued to go through the device, combing each video for evidence or a glimpse of a familiar face or recognisable markers. Her handwriting in her notebook became distinctly more and more unintelligible as the anxious shake in her leg turned into a full body tremor and about three hours later she conceded and closed her laptop.

She put her forehead down on the edge of the table, eyes staring at the carpet below and wondering how she could exist in a world where child rape was so prolific it managed to be marketable. The thoughts swirled in her head and she almost missed the big shoes that appeared in her periphery. She jumped in her seat, forgetting for a moment she was amongst friends, then breathing a sigh of relief when she remembered. 

_“Tranquila, jefe.”_ It was Three, hands spread in surrender and smiling like usual. “It’s just me,”

“Oh.” Eight wanted to shoot herself for being caught off guard. “Sorry. A lot on my mind,” she muttered.

Three helped himself to the seat beside her. “I could tell. You’re shakin’ so hard you’re gonna give us turbulence. You know I hate turbulence?”

“Sorry,” she managed to reply, glancing at her laptop with dread.

Three followed her gaze and connected the dots, then pushed the laptop a little further away from her. “Look, I get it. You really want to get this bastard and all his chomo friends but you don’t have to go through that yourself.”

Eight opened her mouth to argue but Three cut her off.

“We’re getting this to the NYPD as soon as we land, right?” he asked.

Eight nodded back dumbly.

“They got whole teams for that, and for a good reason. It ain’t for one person to carry,” he told her. “We got the list of names, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Three grinned, wild and crazy like the mad son of a bitch that he was. “Then we get this shit to the NYPD and we start collecting some fuckin’ names.”


	7. Kicking Things Off

By the time they’d landed, Eight had been geared up and brooding for an hour and ready to kill everything in sight.  
  


To quote Tony Stark, the plan of attack was “attack”. 

The team was going to go out fishing for a big one on Eight’s hit list. Two, Three and Eight had a name and address each to check out while Four was grounded for obvious reasons. Seven was to have the plane ready for take off as soon as they got back and Five would stay back to maintain comms and keep and eye on Four who was still out like a light. Meanwhile, One needed time to write a bug that would hack the NYPD’s email base and use the Chief's address and email signature to send a mass email to all the major news outlets and magazines containing the entire contents of Dixon’s little black book. Then One was going to rendezvous with the team at 1 Police Plaza to drop off a freshly bugged hard drive and the little black book.

It was three in the morning by the time One notified the away team he’d finished with the bug. Two and Three had come up empty, their addresses abandoned for the night. Eight confirmed a successful catch and gave a ten minute ETA. Two and Three were the first to arrive, waiting in a dark spot under the cover of some trees opposite the NYPD headquarters so as to not draw attention to the fact that they were wearing masks. Next was One, pulling up in a dark SUV.

“Where the fuck is Eight?” he hissed at the pair through his mask.

They both just shrugged.

“Eight!” he hissed into the comms.

“On your six,” was her calm reply.

One stuck his head out the car door to see the masked woman dragging a man down the street by his tie through the gentle snowfall. He was a fat, bulbous man, his expensive suit a dishevelled mess and missing a shoe, but more importantly his wrists had been zip-tied together and his entire head, except for his nose, had been wrapped in duct tape like a mummy.

“Gimme the stuff,” she ordered, her voice cold and steely as she dumped the petrified man against a lamp post outside the building. 

One was quick to rush over as she fished out a couple zipties from her pocket, roughly attaching the man to the pole by the neck. One flinched as the man coughed and choked under his tape gag, but handed the bags to Eight anyway. She snatched them from him and hastily secured them to the mans chest with duct tape, winding it around him and the pole a couple times for good measure.

“Our guns are all clean right?” she asked.

One nodded dumbly, not sure where she was going with this.

“Get in the car, passenger seat,” she ordered, stepping back from her handiwork and unholstering her gun. “Someone let Seven know we’re on our way.”

One ran to the car, glancing back in time to see Eight unload eleven rounds into the ground around the hostage and putting the last one into the guy’s crotch, and One _swore_ he saw a glint of sadistic satisfaction in the woman’s eyes as he man shrieked through his binds and gags. 

Three cheered when he realised what she’d done. “That’s what you get!” he taunted, whooping in the back seat as she tossed the emptied gun over her shoulder and booked it for the car.

“What the hell was that for?” One asked as they peeled off.

“I needed to draw some attention to him,” she said plainly, taking a hard corner and throwing everyone in the car against the wall.

“By shooting him in the dick?” One was incredulous. 

“Police can’t force him to talk but a shot off dick keeps him in hospital where FBI can keep eyes on him,” she explained simply.

“It’s what he deserves,” Three chimed in from the back seat. 

The tyres squealed as they tore through the city, Eight making seemingly bizarre navigation decisions, and yet they managed to avoid seeing a single set of flashing blue and red lights. 

When they finally arrived back at the plane, Eight was only more wound up than before.

“What happened?” Five asked anxiously over the sounds of the plane moving about for take off.

“We finished the mission a whole day ahead of schedule.” But Eight didn’t seem relieved. “Congratulations, team. You’re released from my command.”

“What about the other names?” Three asked. “I thought that’s what we’re doing now.”

“New York’s too hot for us to stay in now,” she explained. “As soon as the police open that hard drive, the targets are going to scatter like marbles. They’re going to try to go into hiding, switch up their finances and do some generally stupid shit that’ll leave a nice trail for us to follow but One will be calling the shots.”

“Firstly, I’d like to acknowledge the fact that you actually called me One in front of everyone and that really was very touching to me,” One said, and Eight rolled her eyes at him. “And yes, she’s right. We need to go back to base and regroup, get some tails on these scumbags and work out a feasible plan of attack.”

Eight fidgeted and brooded the entire way back to their Californian base then disappeared for three straight days in the “war room”, often paging (yes, she got him a pager) One for assistance. In the meantime, the other ghosts kept up with the news as the outlets exploded with the news of the contents of Dixon’s leaked address book.

By the time Eight came out of the briefing room late at night, she smelt like ass and One looked like he was a single breath away from being a second hand smoke addict.

“We’ve got a plan laid out,” he’d said the next morning, dropping himself at the breakfast table with a loud thump.

The gang sat stunned for a moment, paused between bites of pancakes.

“ _Jefe_ don’t fuck around, eh?” Three had taken to calling Eight that since their powwow on the East Coast.

Seven slid a plate of pancakes (his mama’s recipe) in front of One, who nodded his thanks as he dug in. “It’s a tight fucking schedule.”

“How tight are we talking?” Two asked, ever eager to get into the logistics.

“She’s already half way to fuckin LA to round up a couple guys who just bought tickets to Honolulu,” One said, sounding exhausted and dreading the missions ahead. “Basically we’ve divvied up the list into geographic groups and if someone in a group tries anything we head over and collect the whole set. Otherwise, we’re working in order of priority. ”

“But why’s she out there on her own? Aren’t we a team?” Seven asked. “I ain’t seen her come out of that room to eat or sleep. She’s gonna run herself into the ground before we even get to Dixon. Is she even in a state to drive?”

“You really think I sent her out there?” One was irritable and an out of place hair away from getting in someone’s face. “She just up and left and briefed me on the fucking I-5.”

“What’s her deal?” Five muttered, more to herself than anyone else. “She’s gonna get herself killed the way she’s pushing it.”

One let out a huff of an incredulous laugh. “So you guys really don’t get it yet, huh?”

The group stared back at him blankly.

“It’s a revenge fuelled suicide run, dumbasses,” One said like it was obvious, shovelling pancakes into his face.

“I don’t get it,” Four said, honest to goodness perplexed into another plane of existence. “I thought we were doing really good? Ain’t she warmin’ up to us now?”

“Okay, think about it,” One sighed. “She’s been trained in a world class, Mission Impossible style spy agency since the day she stepped out of freakin’ elementary school. They’re all orphans or whatever the fuck tragic James Bond backstory BS they have going on- point is they’re already outcast. All the senior field agents are fuckin’ child genius polygots. The agency has stashes and caches and backups all over the fuckin’ world. Her personal hit team were curated over the period of a decade. She had all that backing her with the full support of her agency and she still failed.”

The ghosts were shocked into silence, but One wasn’t done.

“You wanna know what my pitch was? _If you’re gonna die, you may as well die killing this guy._ Compared to where she came from we offer nothing. We have no specialised training. We have fuck all resources. What she sees in us is a bottomless wallet and some amateur hour wannabes. Get it now?”

Two wasn’t satisfied. “What’s the revenge bit?” 

One sighed again, Eight was going to kill him for telling them but he was going to spill the beans at one point or another. Besides, his team deserved to know. “The reason her initial strike failed was because of sabotage. Dixon paid PPACC to feed her second-in-command bad intel for years. Had him under the impression Dixon was actually investigating the ring himself and was on a personal, private crusade to end it. Eight called it for what it was and dismissed it, but he believed it and took it personally. Came to a head when they attempted to lift the master key in Shanghai. They made the infiltration, but as soon as they made contact, he turned on the team. Eight was scout so she came back to see him put down the last two guys in front of her eyes. She says she got lucky enough to shoot first.”

“I thought you said they were all smart,” Two was suspicious.

“The seniors are.” One corrected her. “He wasn’t because, clearly, he lacked something. But he was loyal and took orders well. Ex-marine or something so you know the type.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the group as the dynamic was suddenly thrown into reverse. Suddenly it was clear that all her insane, selfless actions weren’t just that. They were self destructive and impulsive. She was running on all cylinders all the time hoping to catch fire and bring the whole fucking thing down with her. She didn’t care to die with honour and glory, she was on a one man mission to take down as much scum as she could and she wasn’t going down until someone put her down.

“Oh,” Four sounded like a disappointed kid. “I really thought she was warmin’ up to us.”

“Maybe,” One sounded equally disheartened, “but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“One,” Five sounded serious, “how do you know this woman isn’t going to send us all to our deaths?”

“I don’t, but you all followed me into that Turgistani shitshow didn’t you?” he pointed out. “That’s the point of us. We might die doing it, but it’ll be fucking worth it.”

“I’ll fuckin’ die to kill some chomos,” Three piped up. 

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” One was pumping the breaks on the suicide pact. “We’ve assigned targets for all of you, so let’s get to the briefing room and I’ll hand out your homework.”

One wasn’t joking. The schedule was tight as fuck. For the next month and a half, they’d barely be on base. After all, there were hundreds of people to catch and only the seven of them. They all complained of course, but One insisted he’d already stretched it out from the initial plan. “Besides, it’ll change as people move around. You’ll get your down time,” he promised.

No one believed him.

Needless to say he felt extremely validated when he got a call from Eight ten hours later letting him know she’d taken out three extra targets who’d met with her initial mark to “straighten up their stories.”

“Unless things change, they’ve got two days til the next lot of hits,” she told him. “I’ll be back by midnight.”

“Alright, honey. I’ll have dinner waiting,” One replied in a singsong voice.

Eight laughed, a dark chuckle. “Don’t do that to Seven,” and hung up on him.

One gloated to the ghosts anyway.


	8. What Happens on the Rooftops

The following month was nothing but a gruelling slog. The ghosts were split up and in and out of the base with only hours to a day between hits, mostly to tee up with different partners for different jobs. Eight rarely worked with the others, electing to take entire slews on her own. 

As exhausted as everyone was, no one could deny that the work was rewarding. Unlike the beginning, where they had to work under the cover of darkness and sleuth around to deliver their targets to authorities, now they were dropping big names off in the public square in the middle of the day and letting Joe Blow deal with it. The international community knew someone was flushing Dixon’s entire ring of child sex traffickers, rapists and molesters out of their hiding holes and were at full vigilance. 

Eight’s next hit was in London; some kind of TV executive holed up in the penthouse of his apartment mansion. The guy was a nut with round the clock ground security, so obviously they had to go in from the top and that meant she needed Four.

They sleuthed across the tight knit houses in Bermondsey, foot steps as light as the snowfall around them as they bounded from building to building. Parkour was no walk in the park, it took quick thinking and if you were on the run, you had to plan twenty steps ahead lest you have an incident like Four did in Kiev. Eight was on the fucking ball. She seemed to have the entirety of South London in her mind and every possible alternate route memorised. She’d run him through the basic route, pointing out difficult passes where necessary, but once they were out on foot it was an entirely different story.

“Detour!” she’d call into her comms every time she’d spot even the slightest chance of a complication.

Four guessed she must’ve called it at least ten different times, and each time she was indicating their new heading as she called it. Four found himself suitably impressed.

They made it to the neighbouring property in fair time, donning their masks before scaling the target complex. The plan was for Four to be on covering fire while Eight secured the target and Four could only watch in awe the plan unfolded with terrifying efficiency. The man, convinced of the security that his wealth provided, stood enjoying the barely dawning light with nothing between him and the world but a single pane of glass and his pompous, snow white bathrobe. From the roof above, they dropped in sync, Eight swinging her entire body weight to shatter the glass and dropkicking the man in one motion, rolling and pinning the him on impact before the guard by the staircase could even draw his gun.

“Put it down!” Four ordered with his gun on the guard, Eight also staring him down with her gun on the target’s forehead.

The guard froze, but didn’t make any motion to put his firearm away so Eight shot the ground inches from the target’s face. Tile shattered and flew in every direction, pinging off her mask and cutting up the target’s face.

“Do as they say!” the target barely managed to make it through sobs and whimpers.

And the guard complied, his free hand up as he slowly pulled the gun the rest of the way out of its holster, letting it drop to the tiles. With the nudge of a gun, Four got the guy on his knees and hands above his head to secure him to a post on the staircase with zip-ties.

“Alright, Mr McAffery, why don’t we take a nice slow walk down to the garage,” Eight suggested and the man nodded back dumbly. She yanked him up by his stupid, fluffy robe collar and spun him about face almost violently, grabbing him by the back of his hair and holding her gun to the nape of his neck.

Eight greeted all the guards cordially as they descended the spiral staircase, pausing at the base of the stairs, feet firmly planted and staring the room down like everyone in it was born to be her bitch. Four did his duty, collecting guns and zip-tying people down, but damn if he didn’t feel the terrifying aura she was giving off. It almost made him shiver.

Guards secured, they took the lift down to the basement, taking the keys off the fifteen year old valet who definitely pissed himself before leaving in Mr McAffery’s shiny white Benz.

Their hostage drove, while Four and Eight sat behind, guns trained on him as they navigated him to Scotland Yard.

“Why are you doing this?” he’d asked them at one point.

“There’s no need to keep up the facade, Georgie,” Eight told him, voice low like she was playing with him, “we know you were expecting us.”

“Please,” he begged, “I have money, I’ll pay you anything. I’ll  _ do _ anything.”

“Then you’ll speak to Scotland Yard,” she said.

McAffery gulped loudly. “It’ll ruin me. Please- My whole career-”

Eight shot forward, pressing her body against the back of the driver seat and reaching her gun across and pressing it directly on the man’s crotch, causing the man to yelp in fear. “George,” her calm and threatening tone dropped to barely a whisper in the man’s ear, “did you hear about your friend? Mr Costa, the fat one from New York?”

He whimpered and nodded furiously.

“Mr Costa didn’t want to do the right thing,” she explained, like she was talking to a child, “so I taught him right from wrong. We don’t need a lesson like that for you, do we?”

McAffery shook his head, just as furiously.

“Good,” she commended him, and reclined into the back seat, pulling the gun away from his crotch. 

The man heaved a sigh. 

They’d pulled to a stop at a traffic light, Blackfrair’s Bridge just ahead of them, when McAffery bolted out of the car.

“Fuck!” Eight cursed, diving out after him as the car rolled into the traffic light ahead. 

It was a short pursuit, McAffery barely making it a hundred feet in his floppy slippers before she tackled him into the asphalt, scraping up his face even further. He screamed and hollered bloody murder, causing the early morning crowd to come to a dead stop and watch on in horror.

“Get the spray paint!” Eight yelled at Four, securing his wrists behind him then ripping his robe tie off and stuffing it in his mouth to shut him up, then using zip-ties to secure the gag. By the time she’d manhandled him back to the car, dragging him by his hair as he continued to scream bloody murder, Four had sprayed 'GEORGE MCAFFERY RAPES KIDS' on both sides of the car with big arrows to the front where they’d tie him down. 

Not a single onlooker said anything as they secured the struggling man to the front axel of his car, shackling him to a billboard of his guilt. No one tried to stop them as they sprinted away from the scene.

George McAffery was found by a passing patrol car an hour later, beaten, pissed and spit on by passers by.

“Nice!” Seven had congratulated them when they reported an overall successful result to their mission.

“We’ve shaken any tails but I’d give it an hour before we reach the rendezvous for extraction,” Eight told him.

“Hey, do you reckon we’ll finally get that promotion from One?” Seven asked jokingly. “Six suits me, don’t you think?”

  
Something in Four snapped and he stopped dead in his tracks, just as Eight landed a jump between two buildings.

She turned back, bewildered. “Four-”

“You’re a real fucking cunt, Seven,” he hissed into the comms, then ripped out his earpiece and crushed it underfoot, taking off in the opposite direction.

Eight called after him, but he disregarded it. He knew she didn’t really give a shit about them anyway.

Without the momentum she’d had, there was no way she was getting back over that gap.

“I really wish you hadn’t said that,” she groaned into the comms.

“What?” Seven asked.

“I’m going offline. I’ll let you know our ETA when I have one,” she told him wearily. “Over and out.”

An hour later, she found him high atop an abandoned building, the sliver of risen sun barely brighter than an old halogen bulb behind him and a bitter wind ferociously whipping at his loose hoodie. Either he didn’t notice or didn’t care that someone was approaching, even with the loud crunch of last night’s snow beneath her feet. He sat on a low brick divider, hunched over his own hand with a deep concentration etched into his brow. In his lap a broken pen and in his right hand a long, thin needle. She leaned over his shoulder to get a better look, careful to keep out of the way of the light so he could continue undisturbed. A ‘6’ was taking shape below the inner corner of his wrist.

“Who was Six?” she asked him, voice cautious and gentle so as not to startle him.

“He was here in the beginnin’, a driver,” Four’s voice devoid of the energy it normally had. “American fella, real optimistic type. Had a smile brighter than the sun.”

The woman lowered herself onto the wall beside him, careful not to bump him as he worked. “You fancied him?” Eight was blunt and to the point, she couldn’t help it.

Four’s hand paused and he let out a sharp breath of a laugh. “Yeah, yeah. He was real fit. We got along.”

Eight didn’t know what to say to that. Comfort was not her forte by any means so she thanked her lucky stars when he continued to ramble.

“We buried him at sea,” Four sniffed, whether he was getting emotional or if it was just the cold, she didn’t push to find out. “A piss poor funeral I reckon. One wouldn’t even tell us his name. I would’a said some nice words or somethin’.”

With his poke and stick finally finished, he outstretched his hand and flexed a bit to see his handiwork. The lines weren’t perfect by any means, but he liked it. One might’ve been under the impression that they would be forgotten, but he was wrong.  _ He _ was going to remember, and now he knew he would never forget.

“I like it,” Eight said, catching his attention as she offered him a cigarette, a welcomed interruption to his thoughts. “I think he’d like it too.”

“Thanks,” for the comfort and the cigarette.

They smoked in silence for a moment, watching as South London rose with the lazy winter sun.

“Did you have a nice funeral?” Four asked eventually.

“Didn’t have one. I’m the end of the line,” she said simply. “Some Jane Doe was cremated in my place and mailed the ashes to my agency. We pulled one of my teeth for proof of DNA.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Four was solemn. “I thought I had the shit funeral.”

She just waved him off. “Don’t be, I’m still alive aren’t I?” With a cigarette between her fingers, Eight pointed towards a block of particularly run down public housing flats. “See that ugly thing blocking the horizon?” she said, being sure to catch Four’s attention before he slipped back into a haze. “The flats with the ugly green on the outside.”

“Yeah, I see ‘em.”

“I grew up in that dump,” she said, somehow with pride.

Four was silent for a moment. “No fucking way,” he laughed, “you sound way too proper to come from these ends.”

“Nah bruv,” she replied, a strong accent shining through all of a sudden, “was proper chav growin’ up. Was  _ mad _ on the grind and ting to get where I am now coz my digs was well depressin’.”

It pleased her to see Four grin so wide, even at her own expense. “Can’t fuckin’ believe it. A real, proper chav sittin’ under our noses this whole time.”

“And no one will believe you,” the accent gone, back to her almost robotic tone as she stood up.

“Aw, c’mon!” Four complained, “You’re no fun.”

“Innit?” she teased, walking back they way that she’d come and leaving Four to follow her.

“You’re such a wanker,” Four cursed at her but she just laughed.

They stopped at a chicken shop on the way that Eight swore up and down by, splitting a burger and chips. 

“Manny’s been here since the beginning of time,” Eight said to four when he rounded the corner to meet her. Obviously she couldn’t go in for fear of recognition. “I reckon he slips a bit of crack in his chicken seasoning.”

Four laughed as he picked a building to climb, “I think they all do,” he said, putting the handles of the plastic bag between his teeth.

So they clambered their way to the top of the building. The sun had finally begun to melt away most of the snow and frost so they picked a dry spot to huddle over their food. Eight mostly wanted the chips and Four was craving the burger so that’s how they split it, sharing the can of Irn Bru that came as part of the combo.

“What the fuck?” Eight coughed after taking a sip. “What the hell happened to Irn Bru?”

“Oh, yeah, the fuckin’ sugar tax,” Four groaned through a mouthful of burger. “Some fuckin’ law about how we’re all too fat so they’ve replaced a portion of sugar with sweetner in soft drinks.”

“Well that’s bullshit,” she muttered, angrily taking another sip anyway. “Tell me more about Six.”

Four was taken aback, he didn’t really feel ready to but at the same time he felt like he would burst if he had to keep pretending like he’d never existed. “I dunno, he was my age, we were both adrenaline junkies. We spent a lot of time together when One first made the team.”

“Ever think of making a move?” she asked.

“Well… we might’ve shagged once or twice,” he revealed conspiratorially. 

Eight looked totally scandalised.

“Don’t look at me like that!” Four shouted, face red from his confession. “We had a couple bevvys and we were flirtin’ a bit. Can’t blame a guy for shooting his shot can you?”

Eight just shook her head and laughed, “Guess not. How the hell did you keep One from finding out?”

“It was only once or twice, we kept it off base. Sicily was great cause we got to go out and see sights and stuff,” he said bashfully.

“Uhuh,” Eight replied, entirely unconvinced, “I’m sure you saw a lot of sights.”

Four was beet red. “How about you then!” the blond was quick to turn it on the woman. “You must’a had someone in your life?”

“Ah,” she suddenly looked a bit remorseful, “not a whole lot of time for romancing with my job. No one ever lasted.”

“But you did fancy someone?” he sniffed out. “Go on then, tell us.”

She took a great big sigh, her shoulders deflated completely. “There was someone close to me at work. We were partners for the better part of seven or eight years, and I admired him like nothing else but I wasn’t about to go and shit where I sleep, you know? It was just… bad circumstances.”

Four could tell she wasn’t willing to divulge more than that so he was just grateful to learn as much as he did. He doubted anyone else would be hearing it from her.

“How about you, how was your funeral?” she asked, steering the topic back.

“Wasn’t great. Five people turned up, my mum, her boyfriend, my brother, one of my ex girlfriends and her new boyfriend. Was rough seeing my mum cry over my grave,” he admitted.

“Nice to see your mum, though, right?” Eight was trying to keep it on the positive.

“Yeah, yeah. I ain’t seen her in a couple months and besides thinkin’ her son died she seemed well. I think her new boyfriend’s nice. I hope he sticks around,” Four’s voice was soft with care and concern and the fire in Eight burned.

“I’m sure everything’s on the up and up now that you’re not there harassing her all the time,” she joked instead.

“Wanker,” he said, but he smiled and finished off the Irn Bru. 

Finally, with a full belly and aching legs, Four was ready to go home.


	9. Keeping it Professional

One and Eight were having a spat.

“Are you high?” he yelled at her as soon as he set eyes on her. “Are you out of your _fucking mind?_ ”

“What now?” Eight grit out, in no mood for his attitude.

“What now? It’s like the fucking 1600’s out there! You literally dragged him through the street and put him in stocks!” One yelled at her incredulously.

“You didn’t say anything about it when I did it in New York.” Eight argued.

“I didn’t fucking know you were going to do it!” he cried.

“What’s your fucking issue?” she started raising her voice back at him.

“My issue,” he punctuated his sentence by shoving his phone in her face, an article open about a masked attack on TV executive George McAffrey, “is that you’re on the fucking news!”

“So the fuck what?” she yelled back “We’ve been on the news before!”

One made the face he reserved for only the biggest of idiots. “You’re saying that like it’s a good thing!”

“I’m saying it’s not a big deal!” she screamed. “We fucking got the job done, no deaths, no evidence, no witnesses came forward, the police have no leads, the general public had fun with National Kick a Peadophile On Your Way To Work Day, what the fuck else could you possibly want from me?” she yelled, storming away like a moody teenager.

“A clean fucking job!” he yelled after her. “Maybe a fucking professional!”

But she was gone, throwing a middle finger up behind her as she rounded the corner towards her trailer.

Four and Seven stood to the side, speechless at what they’d just witnessed.

“Sorry you had to see that,” One apologised to the pair, straightening his shirt before heading off in the direction of his own trailer.

The two of them went to the kitchen for some chow and ended up eating in silence.

Eight had been on base for only a couple hours before she left again, this time for Los Vegas. She said she’d gotten new intel that a couple contacts from the list had decided they’d have one final hurrah, planning a party with a lot of drugs and company of the younger variety.

“Fine! Whatever!” One shouted when she told him through his locked trailer door. “You’re always doing whatever the fuck you want anyway. I don’t even know why you bother telling me.”

She didn’t bother to say anything back.

Six hours passed with no word from Eight. It was unusual considering she was extremely vigilant with her communication, but if she was going undercover she could very well just be delayed. One wasn’t too stressed. She said she could handle herself after all, and she was probably still pissed at him anyway.

Another two hours passed and he started to get antsy. What if something _did_ happen? He trusted her to be fine, but simply not knowing was making him nervous. He made himself a tea to calm his nerves.

By the ninth hour, he caved.

He paged her. _STATUS?_

Another hour passed with no reply and he started to get annoyed again. If she wanted to give him the silent treatment, then fine by him! She’s a big girl and didn’t need anyone chasing after her.

By the eleventh hour, he was pissed. Who the fuck did she think she was? He was her boss! How dare she expect him to be at her beck and call, just because she’s from a wanky spy agency or whatever. _He_ was funding it. They would be nowhere without him!

When he finally heard his pager trill twelve hours after she’d left, he ignored it. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with her bullshit. She was probably just informing him of yet another successful hit and how she didn’t need his nagging to get it done.

He refreshed his news app half an hour later, praying that she managed to keep out of the papers this time. The articles were the same bland shit and he breathed a sigh of relief, going back to tracking down some asshole who paid a fuck ton of money to disappear.

About five minutes later his phone lit up, pinging Eight’s location. He blinked, not believing what he saw. When it finally clicked that the notification was real, his heart stopped and his stomach dropped. Eight knew better than to turn a phone GPS on. It was standard policy to never have it enabled, it was too easy to track.

He scrambled for his pager.

 _NEED NARCAN_ , it read.

“Shit! Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit!” he cursed, bolting for the med bay. He pulled the place apart looking for the precious bottle of antidote, waking up Seven and Four in their nearby trailers.

“What’s going on?” Four asked warily, keeping out of One’s way.

“Get dressed, pack standard gear. We’re going to Vegas,” was One’s curt reply as he continued to dig through Five’s well organised inventory.

“But-” Seven was cut off.

“Just fucking do it!” One barked.

They were on the road in less than five minutes and One was doing double the speed limit and praying there were no cops out tonight.

“So, what’s happening?” Seven dared to ask again.

“I don’t know,” was One’s honest response. His voice was quiet with worry. “I know it’s an emergency, that's it.”

They made it to Vegas in half the time and managed to evade police intervention. He was pretty sure he’d tripped a couple traffic cameras but that didn’t bother him, the fines would be going to a dud address anyway. They arrived at the hotel and One was kicking himself for not asking any questions when Eight left. “Fuck, I don’t even know what the hit is!” he cursed, voice tight with stress as he strode towards the reception desk. 

Four grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him in the direction of the lifts instead. He shook his head, _no_ , surreptitiously revealing the universal key card he’d swiped from someone on their arrival. “We’ll start from the penthouse. These scumbags love the top floor.”

“I could fucking kiss you,” One declared as they picked up their pace to the lifts.

One on the verge of a nervous breakdown the entire elevator ride up. 

“I’m sure she’s fine, man,” Seven tried to reassure him, even though he wasn’t sure of it himself.

The lift dinged, indicating their arrival, and the doors opened to reveal a room of carnage. There was food on the floor, spilled wine soaking into the rug and the couch, broken furniture and dishware strewn about the whole penthouse. The three fanned out of the lift cautiously, guns drawn and covering their surroundings methodically.

“Clear,” Four called from the far right corner. “I’ve got an unconscious guy on the floor though.”

“I’ve got two by the couch,” Seven called, he was hunched over the bodies and checking for a pulse. “Out like a light but I think they’re fine.”

Four spotted a set of needles and a small mound of white powder on a small table by the windows and suddenly broke into a cold sweat. “They’ve been shooting smack,” he realised aloud.

“Yeah,” One was short, “which is why we need to find Eight right fucking now.”

Four was already racing to the bathroom. The door was locked, of course.

“Eight?” he knocked on the door rapidly.

He heard a quiet whimper from the other side, then a young voice whispering. “Lady, wake up! There’s someone here!”

Then a groan. “Unh?”

“There’s someone here, lady!” the girl sounded like she was on the brink of tears. “You have to protect us!”

“Eight, is that you?” Four tried again, only to be met with terrified cries.

“Lady, _please!_ ” another little voice begged.

“Oh, no, no. It’s fine, hun,” that was definitely Eight’s voice, but slurred and languid and soft and completely unlike Eight. “It’s my friends. Remember I told you about my friends who were coming?”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

A long, tense moment later, there was a shuffle and then the glorious sound of the door being unlocked. It opened slowly, revealing a little girl barely four feet tall. “Hello,” she greeted shyly. 

“Hi,” Four greeted back, crouching down to her height. “I’m Justin.” 

“I’m Isabelle,” the little girl replied.

Behind her, Four could see two other girls, probably of a similar age. They were huddled behind Eight who was wearing nothing but a lacy red lingerie set and stripper heels, barely propped up by the marble sink and had, at best, a loose grip on her gun. Her skin was pallid and her breathing shallow. Four’s breath hitched at the sight but he tried to keep calm to avoid scaring the children any further. “Thank you for looking after my friend,” he said to Isabelle instead. “You’ve been very brave.”

“It’s okay,” she replied, a waver in her voice but putting on a brave front nonetheless. “She saved us from the bad men. She says we can go home soon.”

“Yeah, you will,” Four promised, “but first we need to give my friend some medicine, okay?”

“Are you going to make her better?” she asked.

“We’re going to do our best,” he assured her.

“Okay,” and Isabelle opened the door wider to let them in.

Seven immediately put himself on babysitting duty, introducing himself (as Alex) as he rounded the girls up to the kitchen area, well out of sight of the bathroom.

With the children out of the way, One and Four could get stuck into getting Eight back in a coherent state.

“Why the fuck did you have to go and do this?” One grumbled as he rifled through his kit, fussing with the needle and bottle. Meanwhile Four had pulled her around to lay her head on his lap, shoving the bath mat under her and then a towel over her body to keep her getting too cold. She was already icy to the touch.

“The handlers are coming back,” Eight said instead. Even high out of her mind and close to an overdose, she was thinking about the job. “Picking up the girls at 4am.”

“Hey,” Four called her attention. Her eyes seemed to have to drag through molasses to meet his. “Seven’s got the girls and they’re gonna be fine. We need you back in top notch ASAP, yeah?”

She nodded, though it looked more like her head falling one way then the other. “Sorry, my opiate tolerance is for shit.”

Four laughed. “Don’t be daft.”

“You ready?” One asked, needle at her arm.

“Just do it,” it seemed like it hurt her to say the words.

The effect was instant, Eight crying out as she was violently wrenched from her chemical euphoria. She became greener and greener before their eyes until she suddenly doubled over, emptying the contents of her stomach. Four had a bin at the ready and managed to catch the majority of the mess, holding her hair back as she puked.

“Y’know what?” One made a face, “Maybe I’ll leave you to it, buddy,” and showed himself out.

Four barely even heard the man, completely focused on Eight. 

He pulled a bathrobe off the shelf and forced her shivering arms through it, tying it tightly around her waist. 

“I’m gonna get the sweats soon,” she told him.

“Yeah, and then you’re gonna be cold,” he was just as curt, doing a double knot on the robe.

She just nodded, he was right. “I fucking hate this,” she complained through the chatter of her teeth, the tremors taking over her whole body now.

“Not your first rodeo?” he asked.

“Unfortunately not.”

She retched again, toes curling at the strain of trying to upend an empty stomach. She groaned, then retched again, then groaned, then retched, then sobbed.

Four froze, unsure that he actually heard what he thought he did, but then she sniffled and a quiet whimper escaped her lips.

“I really, really hate this,” she said, her voice weak and trembling.

Four rubbed her back, making small circles. “It’s gonna be rough,” he said, because he knew she appreciated it when people didn’t pussyfoot around her.

The woman nodded, looking defeated.

“Do you think you’re ready to leave?” he asked.

“No, I need to take care of the handlers first,” she insisted, a shadow of the commanding tone she usually had returning now that she was work-minded again.

“No,” Four corrected her, “ _We_ will take care of the handlers. _You_ are going to take it easy.”

She opened her mouth to argue but Four aggressively pressed a finger to her lips. “I won’t hear it,” he told her, and she guessed that was that.

The handlers arrived at 4am, as Eight had said. The two unsuspecting men were more than easy for One, Four and Seven to handle. They were gagged and tied up with the, still high, targets in short order. 

Seven gave the girls instructions, ran them through how to call for help and what to say. Made them pinky promise to never tell anyone that they were there.

“But how are we gonna tell the police how the bad guys are all tied up?” Isabelle asked.

“Well what’s your favourite superhero in the whole wide world?” he asked.

“I love Wonder Woman!” she said.

“Then you can tell them Wonder Woman came and you helped her tie up the bad guys,” he said, straightening her little jacket.

“Okay.”

Seven double checked that the girls knew what to say on the phone, started the call, then they booked it out of the building.

An hour later, One was driving everyone back to base, this time at a reasonable speed. Seven was keeping up with the news, Eight was about to vibrate out of her skin and Four was keeping a firm hold on her hand, squeezing every once in a while to remind her that she was okay.

“I’m sorry I let you down,” Eight finally said. She sounded small and ashamed.

One let out a sigh from the driver’s seat, deep and heavy like he didn’t know if he should bother saying it. “You’ve got a team around you, Eight. Try and use us once in a while.”


	10. Recovery

One confined Eight to the med bay until the worst of her withdrawal was over. Since Five was still out with Two and Three on a couple hits in Salt Lake City, One, Four and Seven took shifts watching over her for the first two days. Or they were supposed to at least. Four had become somewhat protective of Eight ever since realising she was messing with heroin, taking responsibility for her care right from the hotel til they got back to base, then electing to take first shift. When One came by to relieve him, he brushed him off, saying he wasn’t tired yet and he’d find someone when he felt like he needed to rest. 

Eight, meanwhile, was suffering deeply. Her symptoms had her in hot and cold flashes constantly, her nose ran like it was training for a marathon, she shook so violently at times that her cot would rattle against the linoleum floor. She couldn’t sleep at all, could barely hold down water, let alone solids, each muscle in her body seemed to spasm to their own accord in the basic sweats that Five kept on hand. At least she wasn’t throwing up anymore.

Eventually, late in the evening, still curled in a fetal position but not quite as tightly as before, Eight finally made an attempt at conversation.

“Why don’t you go to bed, Four?” she asked him.

“Nah,” he brushed her off. “Not tired. Besides, I’m not really doing anything important right now.”

“You haven’t slept since at least Vegas,” she argued.

“Neither have you.”

Eight seemed to make an attempt at a laugh. “I had a  _ lot _ of heroin in me.”

There was a pause.

“My mum used smack,” Four revealed suddenly. “Wasn’t always that way, though. She took something for a back injury and it spiralled out of control.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Eight said. Even through the fog of her withdrawal, she instantly recognised that her state was hitting close to home for him. “Must’ve been hard.”

Four grinned a bit sheepishly. “Wasn’t easy. Didn’t have money for food, she never remembered me or my brother’s birthdays from about the age of twelve onwards, lots of dodgy boyfriends,” he paused for a moment to think. “One time, when I was like fourteen, she was seeing this guy. God, he was such a wanker. Guy was physical. Pushed me and Ollie- that’s my brother, by the way- pushed us around a lot. Never hit us though so we never said anything. Just sorta took it ‘cause we were scared, I guess. But one day I come home and this guy’s just layin’ into mum. Fuck- I just saw red and took a rolling pin from the kitchen and let him have it. Put him in hospital for a week,” he said looking proud.

“Did he stay away?” she asked him.

“Sure did,” a faint smirk on his lips from the memory. “Only saw him once when he came to pick up his stuff. I stood on the front step with the rolling pin and watched him the whole time.”

Eight’s chapped lips quirked upwards for the barest moment. “You’re a good son.”

Four snorted. “Tell that to my mother. She threw me out when she found out I was thieving to make ends meet. No problem keepin’ all the cash I sent her though.”

Eight hummed, deep in thought, unsure of what to say.

“Ah, it’s alright though,” he brushed it off. “She’s got it together now, I think. Last I saw her, she’d been clean for a while. Had a nice boyfriend who’s like a got a steady job and not on drugs and shit. Ollie likes him too, so that’s a good sign.”

“Do you miss your brother?” she asked.

“Course!” he said. “Of course. Miss the bugger every day. Walked him to and from school every day. We were tight.” Four looked like he was about to lose himself to a train of thought, then caught himself. “How about you, then? Any siblings?” Then, suddenly back tracking when he realised she probably wouldn’t share, “Not that you have to answer, ‘cause I know you’re like private about personal stuff.”

Eight shook her head, no. “No siblings. Both parents were there, but not really. Ended up spending more time on the streets than I did at home.” She couldn’t tell why she felt compelled to share her personal life with him, but she guessed she would’ve felt awkward considering he’d been by her side comforting her since god knows how long ago. Whether or not it was out of a misguided sense of responsibility, she appreciated his company. “I had friends though. Group of guys, all massive and gangster looking. One guy, Bert, he saw me kicking rocks or whatever and called me over. He introduced his guys and taught me how to play cards. Told me if I ever needed someone, I could go find them. Looking back, it could’ve gone in a much worse direction, but I’m glad I met them. Taught me how to pick pockets so I could finally pay for food that wasn’t covered in mould and roaches. Taught me card tricks to cheat tourists. We had fun.”

It was absolutely bizarre to Four, how they had essentially the same childhood but grew to be entirely different people. Four could still see a lot of his childhood still in him. He stole compulsively, in case he needed to pawn something for cash, he budgeted obsessively, even though he knew One’s credit card was effectively bottomless, he hoarded broken bits and pieces because he couldn’t stand the thought of throwing money in the bin like that. Meanwhile, Eight seemed to have shed that life entirely and left it behind. He couldn’t understand how her trailer managed to be almost completely devoid of personal items, how she could dump a mission (which often cost One hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to run) mid way without a second thought if she got so much as the wrong vibe, how she could come from a background so colourful and be completely bland to the eye. How she could completely remove her identity from herself.

All said and done, Four supposed he would have probably done the same. He wasn’t ashamed of his upbringing, but he certainly wasn’t proud of it. Yes, he was a good thief, but a thief nonetheless. Even his junkie mother chased him out.

“Four,” Eight’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. “You really should sleep.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but a yawn escaped in its place.

Eight sighed, knowing she wasn’t going to win the war. “If you really insist on staying, will you at least take the other cot?” she bargained. “Just get yourself horizontal before you break your neck in that chair.”

_ Typical _ , Four thought, that even in such an awful state she’d be considering someone else. “Fine,” he relented, shuffling over to the cot opposite hers and lying in it, pulling the blanket over himself. “Happy now?” 

Eight was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep before she could answer him.

When Four woke the next day, the early morning light streaming directly onto his face and rousing him from his sleep. He rolled over in his cot with a pained grunt, then broke into a cold sweat when he found Eight’s cot empty. He shot up, shoving his blanket aside and looking for any sign of the woman. The bathroom door was open and the light off, so that wasn’t it. Suddenly he heard crinkling and clattering from the medical store room, and if his heart hadn’t dropped enough, it really fell the whole way through his ass now. He rushed to the room, slamming the door open and all but tackling the woman when he found her on the floor with a small collection of medical bottles.

“God! Why the fuck would you do that!” he shouted at her, struggling with the woman as she tried to shake him off. “You were almost fucking done with withdrawal too you fucking idiot!”

“I’m not fucking using, Four!” she shouted right back.

He just kept trying to wrestle her back out to the med bay and laughed darkly at her. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I’m not!” she shouted again, waving… an EFTPOS machine? at him. “Look! It’s a label marker!”

Four stopped dead, his grip loosening on her.

Eight wiggled out of his grasp and sighed as the pressure relieved from her aching body. She rolled up her sleeves and showed them to him, her skin completely unmarked outside of old scars and the one pinprick scab from Friday night. “Look, no new track marks. I’m still clean,” she reassured him.

Four couldn’t help but run his fingers over her veins, just in case. 

“I’m reorganising,” she explained. “One left it in a real state.”

“Sorry,” he apologised, feeling pretty stupid. “I just- I panicked.”

“It’s alright, man,” she said as she righted herself and went right back to what she was doing. “I probably would’ve done the same thing.”

“You must be feeling alright if you’re up doing stuff?” he tried.

Eight’s fingers flew over the keys as she typed out another label and stuck it to the shelf. “I feel horrible actually,” she admitted, scooping the last of the bottles off the floor and putting them away. “But I can ignore it if I have something to do.”

An idea came to Four’s mind, as logical as the sky was blue. “Have you ever made waffles?”

Eight looked at him with confusion. 

“Come on,” he grabbed her by the hand and led her out. 

Eight sat at the breakfast island, watching in a daze as Four scurried about the kitchen on a mission for waffles, stopping every now and again to show her what he was doing. She had her head propped up on one arm, leaning on the stone bench top.

“So waffles are your thing, huh?” she asked.

“Food is the most important part of recovery,” he told her with confidence, pouring batter into the iron, “and what better food is there than waffles?”

Eight didn’t bother to argue. 

Five minutes later, he had the first batch of waffles done, topped with strawberries and maple syrup, a can of whipped cream to the side, setting it down as Seven strolled into the kitchen.

“What’s goin’ on here?” he asked, sitting himself down next to Eight. “How are you feeling? Ain’t seen you in a minute.”

“I’ll be better soon, I’m sure,” she promised him. “Four says his waffles cure all.”

“They do!” he chimed in, ladling more batter into the iron before turning back to her and seeing she hadn’t started yet. “Go on! Dig in!”

Eight’s stomach was sending her strong messages that it wasn’t read for solid, rich, fatty foods yet, but she couldn’t deny the childish excitement in his eyes and she really believed for a second that Four genuinely thought it would cure her of her withdrawal. She took a sip of water, the mental gymnastics telling her she was lining her stomach for solids, then cut into the half crunchy, half fluffy waffles and taking a conservative bite.

They were indisputably delicious. “Fuck, that’s nice,” she muttered more to herself than anyone else, but Four heard anyway and beamed ear to ear. Her stomach was already rebelling at the presence of solid foods, but she figured she’d be throwing up at some point in the day anyway. She cut herself another, slightly less conservative, bite.

“Aight man, you’ve convinced me,” Seven was rubbing his hand together, ready for some good food. “Hit me up.”

“You’ll get your share, don’t worry,” Four laughed. “We all have to eat ‘em together so Eight gets better.”

And that made absolutely no sense to either of them.

“Come again?” Seven asked.

“Y’know, it’s like tradition!” he said like it explained anything at all. “We all have to eat waffles together to make the dope sickness go away.” 

Seven thought it was fucked up that he had dealt with heroin withdrawal so many times that he’d developed a tradition around it at all. But he said it with such confidence that he and Eight looked at each other and just shrugged.

“Yeah, of course, man,” Seven said. “Waffles for withdrawal.”

“Hey, that’s good! I like that!” Four laughed as he pulled another batch of waffles. “I’m definitely stealing that.”

“What are we stealing now?” One said as he wandered in, looking directionless as he usually did before his first coffee. 

“One!” Four cheered as he turned back to the iron. “Sit down, mate. We’re doing Withdrawal Waffles.”

One pulled a face, clearly confused, but joined them anyway. “The fuck are withdrawal waffles? I hate to break it to you but they are not as appetising as I think you think they sound.”

“Come on, One,” Seven groaned, playing along, “ _ everyone _ knows about Withdrawal Waffles. We all sit together and eat waffles and the withdrawal goes away.”

One pulled another face, only becoming more perplexed by the second. “I’m not sure that’s how-” he stopped himself with another thought. “Eight you shouldn’t even be-!”

The woman in question cut him off with a sharp look, daring him to ruin this for her.

One took a sharp breath, knowing he wasn’t going to win this round. “Y’know what, you’re right. What better than waffles?”

“That’s the spirit!” Four was in a superb mood, handing their leader a mug of coffee.

Eight definitely barfed after breakfast, but she figured it was worth it. After a grueling forty eight hours of unbearable insomnia, twitching and shaking non-stop, vomiting the nothing out of her stomach every hour, and anxiety so intense she thought she might’ve been going into cardiac arrest, she thought maybe the worst of it had passed.

Her breath stank something nasty, she was sweaty from the exertion of heaving up everything she’d eaten that morning and her hair stuck to her clammy skin, but in the soft, warm light of the late morning sunlight, she finally dozed off.


	11. Grounded

Eight did not take it well when One reiterated that she would remain grounded and suspended until  _ all _ of her withdrawal symptoms were gone. She especially didn’t take it well when Five backed him up on it.

Her mood only soured further when the doctor caught her trying to smoke a hole into her left lung to cope with the news. Five didn’t say anything, but her “I’m not angry with you, just disappointed” look gave her the shits to no end. Eight’s policy to treat medics well was turning to bite her in the ass. Once Five was well out of range, she threw her remaining cigarettes at the wall with a cry of frustration. Her skin was itching on so many levels and there was literally nothing she could do to distract herself.

She helped herself into the briefing room, ignoring One’s protests, and started going through paperwork. He wasn’t happy about it and she couldn’t understand why. It was work that needed to be done for fuck’s sake! They yelled and screamed about paperwork for a solid half hour. In the end, it took a warning shot into a wall and a whole entire gun pointed at her head to get her to leave.

So that was a no go.

Four spotted her as she stormed out, having heard the gunshot and ran up to see what the commotion was about.

“Eight!” he called, trying to catch up to her brisk pace.

“What.” She didn’t turn to meet his gaze and her tone was sharp and snippy, completely unlike the person he spent hours with in the med bay just the day before.

“I heard a gunshot… is everything okay?” he asked, finally catching up.

“Peachy.”

Four reminded himself that she wasn’t done with the withdrawal and that was where her rude behaviour was coming from. He tried harder. “We can go for a hike, or a climb if you want? My mum used to go for walks when-”

“No offence, Four,” Eight cut him off, finally turning to look at him, only to push a firm hand to his chest and literally put space between them, “I really don’t want to hear about your mum. I don’t give a fuck what she did or didn’t do. I treat you nice, but don’t mistake me for family.”

Four was trying really, really hard to remind himself that it wasn’t her talking, it was the heroin. Heroin was indiscriminately unkind. It ruined people. It wasn’t their fault. “Well I’m here for you, if you want anything.”

“I want you to leave me alone,” was her reply, and that hurt to hear on a whole other level.

“Okay.” He tried to not let it show in his voice, but Four was never the best liar.

Eight stayed for only a moment longer, and she seemed to have little to no regard for the man before her. Like they hadn’t worked in close proximity for the better part of two months. Like he didn’t know she hovered and agonised and kept tabs on every move of every mission. Like he didn’t know she gave a shit.

“Just give me some fuckin’ peace,” she muttered as she strode off.

  
  
  


She was craving something, so she went to the kitchen, only to find what she was craving was heroin. She begrudgingly made herself a coffee instead. 

“ _ Jefe! _ ” Three’s voice cheered from behind her, causing her to jerk in surprise. “A bit jumpy today, eh?”

She really did not have the energy for his personality today. “Yeah,” she grunted instead, taking another sip of her coffee and praying he was just passing through.

No gods were watching her today, clearly, because he sat down right next to her as Two walked in.  _ Great, more people. _ She just hoped they’d pay more attention to each other than her and did her best to ignore their inane, lovey dovey chit chat.

“Eight, what do you have coming up?” Two asked, trying to keep the conversation simple.

“Hah!” she laughed, the sound sharp and dark and bitter. “Nothing. One benched me.”

“I’m sorry,” and Eight hated hearing her sympathy. “It’s hard having nothing to do.”

“I’m sure One’s got the two of you off as a dream team hit squad.” Eight couldn’t hide her resentful tone

Three chuckled, squeezing Two tight to his side. “I think he’s just sick of seeing us suckin’ face like teenagers.”

“Uhuh,” was the only non-venomous response Eight could come up with, drowning anything else with a long sip of coffee.

“ _ Jefe _ ,” Three caught her attention, his tone changing completely, “heroin’s serious business. You start to feel anything ain’t right, you let me know. I had brothers back in the day wh-”

Eight’s mug slammed back onto the kitchen bench with force, cracking and splintering and sending coffee everywhere. “What the  _ fuck _ is everyone’s problem?” she exclaimed as the two others jumped back from her sudden outburst. “Why the  _ fuck _ can’t I do anything in peace? I can’t fucking smoke, I can’t do fucking paper work, can’t have a fucking coffee! Someone’s always there with their fucking nose in my shit telling me how I feel and how I’m gonna feel and who I need to report to and what I should fucking do like I’m a fucking baby with a booboo!” She pegged the handle of the broken mug still in her hand into the wall opposite, the ceramic shattering and flying in every direction, a ricochet catching Two on the back of the hand as she ducked.

“Hey!” Three shouted this time. “The  _ fuck _ is your problem?” he got in her face. He stood an entire head above hers but the smaller woman was giving no indication of backing down.

“Your deaf or something?” she spat back. 

“We’re trying to help you,  _ pendeja! _ ” Three said incredulously. “Why the fuck are you so allergic to other people giving a shit, huh?”

“You should go for a walk,” Two told her, trying to separate the two before there was an altercation. “Blow off some steam.”

Eight stopped in a moment of disbelief then barked a laugh at the frenchman. “See what I’m talking about?” she asked. She wasn’t shouting anymore and seemed genuinely amused by the apparent irony of the situation. She chuckled to herself and fished a cigarette out of her back pocket, letting it dangle out the corner of her mouth as she carelessly walked over the remains of the broken mug and spilled coffee to the cupboard. “Unbe-fucking-lievable,” she muttered to herself as she picked out a new mug and a bottle of rum. 

“Where are you going with that?” Three asked. He was still mad but Eight was clearly about to do something stupid and regrettable.

“Eight!” he called after her, shocked that she wouldn’t even acknowledge him as she walked out of the kitchen like neither of them had been there to begin with. 

One wanted nothing to do with it when Two and Three reported her behaviour to him, even with Five’s recommendation to institutionalise her until all her symptoms passed.

“She can handle herself,” One said dismissively, head buried in schedules and trackers. “I’m not dealing with her shit. She can figure it out on her own.”

“Are you listening to me?” Five blew up at him. “She’s volatile! She’s gonna hurt herself or one of us!”

“What do you want me to say, Five?” One asked, finally putting the stupid papers down. “Go ahead? Pick a fight with her? Because you know she’ll fucking fight you, right?”

Five was taken aback, but remained angry. “She needs immediate care. That’s  _ my _ job.  _ Your _ job is to figure out how I can get it to her.”

He rubbed at his eyes roughly with a frustrated grunt, then pushed a computer screen in their direction. “You see this?” he pointed at a global map, red spots littered all over the place. “These are priority targets. You know how many we’ve caught so far? Forty! Out of a hundred and fifty! In a month, we’ve caught less than a third of the priority targets and some of them were dumb fucking luck. And that’s  _ just _ the priority targets. We’re not talking one time customers, we’re not talking friends and family and partners who turn a blind eye to repeat offenders, we’re not even talking fucking low level traffickers desperate for a buck. These are assholes in the One Percent, repeat offenders, they possess CP or produce their own, they’ve got fingers in the operation  _ and _ the governments can’t or won’t touch them.  _ My job _ is to keep an eye on them because they have enough money that if they go off the grid, they can stay off the fucking grid. Each day that passes makes it harder to keep tabs. If we don’t take down the whole top tier they’re just gonna come back like fuckin’ roaches. Since Eight is benched, I’m hauling ass for two keeping on top of these shits.”

“What’s your point?” Five asked. “Why can’t she do paperwork? She lost her shit literally as soon as you took her off it.”

One laughed. “I’m sorry, have you  _ met _ her? She’ll be running after the first guy who even twitches in the wrong direction and which one of us is gonna even notice before she’s gone? And who’s gonna go after her? Is it gonna be any of you?” he asked.

No one said anything because he was right. No one doubted that Eight was more than capable of seeing herself off to the next target, even in her current state. And there was no doubt that she’d be able to slip away without triggering anyone’s notice. 

“My point is we have to pick up the slack while she’s sidelined,” One’s tone had softened and it was clear he was exhausted. “As much as I’m the head honcho or whatever, it’s her op. She handed me the entire thing ready to go the day I met her. Each mission prior to New York was planned in advance, she had resources set aside already, probably already had tabs on most of the names in that book before we got our hands on it. It’s her freakin’ life mission so she’s not about to pump the breaks for what she probably thinks is a bad flu. She’ll fucking kill you if you try to lock her in a room.”

Five was about to insist on something, but One cut her off.

“Y’know what? I don’t care anymore. No one around her fucking listens to me anyway. Do whatever you want. You want to quarantine her, go ahead. If she stabs you, I’m not responsible. I’m sure WorryWart #1 and #2 here will give you a hand,” he gestured at Two and Three before waving them off.

So Five took that as approval for her to use her executive power as head of medical and gathered the team to look for the woman, searching every inch of the vast air base. Eventually, a full six hours after they’d set out, Seven found her stowed away in the back corner of a plane’s cargo hold, the only indicator being the empty rum bottle which had rolled out and landed in the dirt.

“Eight?” he called out, shining his torch into the compartment.

No response, but not unexpected.

The light eventually hit the body of a woman, curled up in a corner and covered with the fabric of what looked like old parachute material.

“Eight,” he called to her again, more firmly, as he made his way into the space, crouching to avoid the low ceiling. “You gotta come with me to med bay. You’re not well.”

“I jus’ wanna be left ‘lone,” was the slurred reply as she pulled the ratty material tighter around herself. “I’m not doin’ anythin’ anyway. Jus’ le’ me ‘lone.”

Seven knelt down next to her on the dirty, dusty floor. “C’mon now,” he tried to be encouraging, though his patience was waning, “let me take you to med bay, then we’ll give you as much space as you want, alright?”

“What’s the point?” she asked him. “I’m no good. One can run the op. Last team I had all died and it was my fault. You’re better off without me.”

“That ain’t true and you know it,” Seven replied, trying to keep her from falling into the drunken black hole of past regrets. “We wouldn’t be anywhere without you.”

“Could’a done it without me,” she disagreed. “Pro’ly should’a. I fuck everything up. Look at me, ‘m useless.”

“You’re drunk,” Seven pointed out helpfully.

“Yeah, but I was already useless,” she lamented. “I’m bad luck. You’re all gonna die and it’ll be ‘cause’a me.”

“No one’s dying. And  _ you _ ,” he punctuated the sentence by hauling the woman up by the arm, “are not gonna die of alcohol poisoning today. Come on, up you get.”

  
Eight was surprisingly complacent, letting herself get manhandled around without complaint.

“Are you taking me to jail?” she asked solemnly, as they awkwardly shuffled out of the cargo hold together.

“We don’t have a jail here,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, but going to medical is the same thing, y’know?” she said. “Can’t work, can’t go out, can’t have a smoke, can’t fuckin’… work.”

Seven snorted as they stepped out of the hold, Eight leaning her full weight on him. “Is that all you think about? Work?” he asked. “Surely you have hobbies.”

“I like catching nonces,” she said, after a thoughtful hum and Seven couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, how about a sport? Or music?” 

“Does target practice count as sport?” she asked, and it seemed to be genuine so Seven let her have it. 

“I’ll allow it,” he relented.

“Then I like target practice. Especially the obstacle course ones. Gets the blood pumpin’, y’know?” she said. “And like, if I’m good enough… then like… then everyone goes home alive.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Seven said, but she shook her head, the movement throwing her off balance and she would’ve fallen over if he wasn’t already bracing her.

“No. Y’ wrong. ’s my fault. Should’a known. That was my job- knowin’ stuff. I had to be ahead of the enemy an’ stuff. That’s  _ my _ job. Should’a known,” she sounded like a broken record, her voice wobbly with remorse. “I killed ‘em.”

“No. Don’t you dare say that,” Seven wasn’t about to let her take it that far, holding both her shoulders firmly in front of him, making her face him. “That wasn’t you. You didn’t pull that trigger. You rejected that bad intel and you did your job.”

She wouldn’t make eye contact with him, her knees giving out under her and she collapsed into the red dirt. “No. If I did my job my team would be alive. My job was keepin’ them alive.” She had her face in her hands and there really was no force in the world that could convince her otherwise.

Eventually, Seven was able to coax her to the med bay, promising a nice, warm, soft cot to sleep in. She didn’t protest when he dumped her into the bed, or when they cuffed her to it, or when Five gave her a sedative to help her sleep off her drink. She curled up and turned away from them, looking defeated and ashamed.


	12. Keeping Busy

Eight’s first day under observation was frustratingly, mind numbingly dull. After a short probationary period in the morning and a thorough reaming out from One, she was uncuffed from the bed and left to roam the small space of the infirmary. The four white walls of the surgery only made her feel claustrophobic and agitated and in desperate need to do something productive. To be useful. She tried to plan future assaults with the information she last remembered seeing but without access to the current data, it was a pointless exercise. So she twiddled her thumbs and watched the pattern of the sun crossing the wall for an entire hour before she lost her cool and looked for something to do. At this point, any task would do.

She started by stripping the cots in the med bay and folding the sheets, then she emptied drawers, and wiped them down with an old cloth before rearranging everything. She filled the tiny sink, then wiped the whole room down, floor included, put the sheets back on the beds and somehow managed to only kill two hours. So, with the help of a stray hairpin that she’d found while cleaning, she broke into the medical storage room, pulled the whole thing apart and began reorganising. She had everything categorized by type in under an hour so she started ordering them alphabetically within their categories, then expiry date for the fun of it. Thankfully, that took her significantly longer, blessedly dragging the tedious process well into the afternoon. Eight was only human, after all, and just like anyone else, had to sing the alphabet in her head each time just in case she forgot what order they were in.

Five caught Eight rummaging around the store room around three o’clock, scolded her, then pulled a chair up by the door with her tablet and worked on something so she could keep an eye on her. Eight finished an hour later, anxiety ramped all the way back to a hundred the second she was done. Her fingers twitched and she itched for something else to do. 

Five, who still hadn’t learned better, had left the front door unlocked so Eight decided to take advantage of the situation and made a break for it. She was on the other side with the door shut and locked behind her before the good doctor was even out of her chair.

“I’ll be back!” Eight shouted unhelpfully over Five’s angry demands to be let out.

Eight had no idea where she was going but she was going somewhere and that’s what mattered. Her feet took her in the direction of the middle of the base where the kitchen was and she thought it was probably a good place to start. The boys, minus Seven, were notorious for making a mess. With any luck the sink would be full, the counters a small scale disaster and the stove top would need a decent amount of elbow grease. Eight was determined to have the place shining by the time she was done.

She reached the sliding door to the kitchen, pushed it open, then froze like a deer in headlights when she was met with five pairs of eyes. The team were gathered around the breakfast counter, frozen in their conversation when they realised exactly who had interrupted them. Never, in the whole time that they’d known Eight, had they ever seen her stop dead for anything. She had the door slammed shut and run off so quickly, it left the others to wonder if they’d had a group hallucination.

She bumped into Five halfway back, the doctor lambasting her in a righteous fury, not even bothering to question why her escapee had made a return trip so soon until they were back at the medical room doors.

"You wanna tell me what happened just now?" Five asked when Eight pressed herself against the inside wall, looking like she was trying to get her thoughts in order.

“I wanted to clean the kitchen,” Eight replied. It was and wasn’t a lie. 

Five frowned, realising that her actions weren’t matching up to her words. Something must’ve been askew for the woman to be all over the place like this. “So why are you back here?”

“I panicked.” Eight looked like it pained her to say it. 

Five waited for her to elaborate.

“They saw me.”

“And?” the doctor pressed.

Eight’s posture remained tight with anxiety, her brow furrowed the same way it did whenever she was trying to work the team out of a tight bind. Five was fairly certain Eight was, at least on a subconscious level, trying to strategize a way out her current circumstances. “I dunno. I just left.”

She considered the woman before her for a moment. Eight was a mess, that was for sure. She suspected that from the moment her second in command had turned coat she had been desperately trying to convince herself that she still had control of her life, that she still had a definitive direction and goal. With the most recent turn of events, that facade was rapidly disintegrating. The truth was she had no control, her direction was at best a vague path towards one guy who was the origin of an operation but could very well be nothing more than a placeholder by now, and she had been dangerously propelling herself forward by way of adrenaline fuelled revenge. Now that she had nothing to do and nowhere to go, Eight was about to combust on the energy that was building inside her. Without some kind of task to keep her feeling useful, Five knew Eight would continue to lash out and, before long, do irreparable damage.

She tried a compromise. “Why don’t you have a nap. I’ll give you something to help you sleep, then once you’re rested, we’ll go to the kitchen and do a clean and a tidy,” she told her.

Eight looked at her with big, sad, tired eyes, like she was disappointed to hear what Five had said. “You don’t have to go out of your way for me like that. I’m just having a mood,” she tried to brush it off and not make it sound like she was feeling crushed by Five’s pity.

Five was having none of it. “Well the kitchen needs to be cleaned regardless. One’s got me doing some paperwork so I can’t do it myself, and we know the boys aren’t going to do it, especially since Blaine’s putting his foot down and refusing to clean up after the others. Camille definitely won’t clean considering she hasn’t used that kitchen for anything other than coffee since I’ve been here.” 

Eight would be stupid to not see the olive branch that was being extended. “I guess I should do it then.”

“Great. I’ve got to take care of something else first, so you have your nap and then we’ll head over,” the doctor decided.

Eight wasn’t keen on the idea of being put down for a nap like a tantruming toddler, but understood the subtext- _cool your heels, and if you’re behaved, then we’ll get about doing something else._

“Yeah, I’m pretty tired actually,” she agreed. It was a lie and they both knew it, but Five was just grateful the woman was being cooperative.

“Okay, so you won’t need an Ambien then?” she asked anyway.

Eight shook her head, no, and moved to lie down in her cot.

“I’ll be in my office. Come fetch me when you wake up,” Five told her as she turned the lights off behind her.

Eight didn’t manage any sleep, but thankfully didn’t work herself into a frenzy either. Just knowing she had some work coming up was enough to keep her level-headed. She watched the clock and waited, and once two hours and thirty seven minutes had passed (it seemed like an organic amount of time to have napped), she got up and went looking for Five.

A short and decidedly calm stroll later, they arrived to a blessedly abandoned kitchen, which she assumed the doctor played a heavy hand in. It seemed like Three had cooked dinner that evening, the indications of his grandmother’s famous tamale recipe spread over the entire kitchen.

“Do you need my help?” Five asked her, as she settled into a bar stool at the breakfast bench.

Eight shook her head, no, as she gathered what she could only assume was Four’s collection of used mugs. The man drank tea like it was going out of style.

Much like earlier in the day, Five worked on her tablet in silence and let Eight scurry about as needed, only occasionally piping up when she felt she needed her colleague’s input where medical inventory was involved.

“How is Four’s shoulder?” Eight asked as she reorganised the pantry. “Is that stuff I ordered working?”

Five replied with an affirmative sound. “He’s responding well. Just have to keep an eye on it being an experimental treatment and all.”

The doctor spied the smallest of smiles, barely an upwards tick in the corner of her mouth, as Eight turned her attention back to the pantry with nothing more than a self-satisfied hum.

At some point between scrubbing the stove-top to the point of gleaming and cleaning up the dining area, Eight had started a tray of vegetables in the oven to roast and a pot of ends and skins bubbling in a pot for stock, and the hearty, herby smell was warming the kitchen nicely. 

She had the whole dining area shining- floor swept, then mopped, table and chairs wiped, even the walls scrubbed down, by the time the oven’s timer rang. Not too long after, she had assembled a modest dinner of hearty soup and crusty bread in front of Five. The doctor took it for what it was- a silent thank you for her care and discretion. 

They ate and chatted about nothing in particular to the gentle humming and churning of the dishwasher in the background, and when Five suggested they bed down for the night, Eight agreed with little protest.

Five seemed to think that maybe Eight was finally making improvements until she was rudely awoken the next morning by Eight slamming her trailer door open, giving the doctor the fright of her young life.

“Fuck!” she shrieked, scrambling to get herself together enough to figure out exactly what the hell was going on. “Eight! What the fuck!”

“Something’s happening,” was the woman’s blunt reply, her voice uncharacteristically tight. “Something’s going on with me.”

“Yeah, no shit-”

“I think I’m having a heart attack.”

Five rushed the woman to the infirmary without another word, then thanked the gods above when it turned out to be nothing. Eight couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“I think you had a panic attack, Eight,” Five tried to be as delicate as possible without coming off as condescending. “The symptoms can seem very similar for someone who hasn’t experienced either before.”

“I- I’ve never had a panic attack before,” Eight admitted quietly. 

Five smiled endearingly, “Not to sound like your nagging wife or anything, but you need to cut down on those cigarettes. That amount of nicotine would set anyone off.”

Eight had no good arguments, so instead she pouted and said, “You _do_ sound like my nagging wife.”

Five rolled her eyes at the childish behaviour, but said nothing more on it, pacified enough that Eight hadn’t shut her down outright. “Do you want a tea?” she asked instead.

Eight nodded quietly. 

Five put on some gentle music in the background and got about putting together two cups of tea. She was surprised to learn that Eight liked hers with one sugar and a bit of milk. Not that it was an unusual order, but she supposed she was expecting something ‘manlier’. With every detail she learned about her, Eight was slowly becoming just another, regular, ordinary person.

When she asked about what Eight thought might’ve brought on her panic attack, the former spy was surprisingly forthcoming. The woman talked freely about the dream she’d had, set in the dimly lit kitchen of her old office, sat around a large round table with her old team. They were talking about nothing in particular and, as dream logic goes, there was nothing wrong in the world. Then one by one, her teammates disappeared, like they’d been snapped out of existence. She described to the doctor the looks of terror on their faces as they faded from sight, how they screamed their final words, blaming her for their deaths, then how she’d been frozen in place at the table, unable to move or get up or even shout.

Then waking up in a cold sweat, chest pounding and looking for the closest sign of danger. Then she’d tried to calm herself down by getting some water and getting dressed. How she’d expected that by getting up and doing things she’d start to feel better, but then she started to feel nauseous and she couldn’t get her breathing under control and the feeling in her chest burned worse and worse, so she broke out of the infirmary and ended up at the doctor’s front door.

Some further prodding revealed this was Eight’s first such experience, much to Five’s shock, and while it had caught her completely off guard this morning, she’d been expecting something like this.

“So what’s the diagnosis, Doc? Is it PTSD?” she asked, voice still sounding unsteady. It did not slip Five’s notice that it was the first time she’d heard Eight refer to anyone by something other than their assigned number. (Well, outside of One, but he’d always been a special case.)

“We’ll keep a close eye on it,” Five promised her, sensing the woman was concerned her current condition might affect her performance going forward. “Right now, it’s just a bad dream and a panic attack, mixed with recovering from using heroin. It’s a lot to handle for anyone.”

The words seemed to do little to assure her, but Eight nodded her agreement anyway.

“What are you going to do today?” Five asked, moving the conversation along.

Eight shrugged and had another sip of her tea. “I’ve been meaning to do inventory in the armoury, but that might count as paperwork.”

“I think we can get away with it,” Five replied after a moment of thought. “It needs to be done, right?”  
Eight nodded back. “One doesn’t have the time at the moment. We’re going to get ourselves in a sticky situation if we don’t get on top of it soon.”

“Sounds like a sensible thing to do then,” Five decided. “Do you want to head over now?”

“You should probably change into warmer clothes,” Eight pointed out, “though I appreciate your enthusiasm.”

Five blushed, realising in their panic to ensure Eight wasn’t about to go into cardiac arrest, she hadn’t stopped to change out of her pajamas. “Yes, probably,” she agreed quickly. “I’ll meet you back here in a couple minutes.”

All in all, doing inventory was a long and tedious, but uneventful affair. According to Eight, it was the eighth wonder of the modern world that anyone could find anything, but all the better for her purposes, Five thought, considering they would soon run out of tasks to keep her occupied.

Around lunch time, Eight announced she had inventory completed and would move onto reorganising. When Five suggested they stop to eat with the others, Eight responded by freezing the fuck up.

“Not ready to see them?” the doctor asked gently.

Eight shook her head, no.

“Why not?” Five asked. “It’s not like you to not be able to handle your team.”

“I said some regrettable things,” she admitted. “I don’t know how to apologise yet.”

“You’ll figure it out,” the doctor assured her, “but don’t leave it too long.”

Eight nodded, fell silent for a moment in thought, looking like she was finding the right words to say. “Sorry for locking you in medical yesterday, even if you had your key on you. And thank you for looking after me.”

“It’s my job-”

“You’ve gone above and beyond and you know it,” Eight snapped, though it was without any malice. “You could’ve kept me locked up the whole time.”

Five’s phone trilled in her pocket as she snorted cynically. “We both know that’s not true.”

At least Eight had the decency to seem at least a bit embarrassed.

The message on Five’s phone brought no good news. A high priority target was making a run for it and the team was to fly out to Guatemala immediately to intercept it. Specifically the team minus Eight. Five was ready to kick up a fuss over the phone with One, but a steady hand on her arm gave her pause before she could take off with her infamous temper.

“I’ll behave,” she promised the doctor. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

Five brow furrowed deeply with concern and she worried her lip for a moment before she spoke again. “You call me if any symptoms change, okay? And write down anything you think might be relevant if you have another panic attack. And cut down on those cigarettes! You smell awful when you chainsmoke.”

Eight rolled her eyes and huffed a laugh at her. “You really do sound like my nagging wife.”


	13. Racking Up Frequent Flyer Points

Artyon Obolensky had just liquidated all three of his multi-million dollar businesses in the span of a couple hours and was literally on his way to living his retirement off the grid. The team were on their way to intercept him in Guatemala, praying they’d get there in time before the man disappeared for good. One was stressed out of his mind as he ran the mission through to the team. He watched his laptop from the corner of his eye and grey hairs seemed to sprout each time a marker disappeared or moved. 

It was a learning experience, to say the least, going from Eight’s management to One’s. Eight seemed to have a knack for last minute hits, her expansive knowledge of seemingly every corner of the earth meant she was quick on her feet to come up with last minute solutions to every problem. One, on the other hand, was far better at planning well in advance. No one doubted his ability to think three steps ahead of the enemy. The man had a certain paranoia that had him thinking well into the future to avoid any potential conflict well before it could crop up.

That being said, no one was prepared for how batshit paranoid Obolensky was. They should’ve seen it coming, considering the man was responsible for overseeing the entire smuggling operation that came in and out of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. Made sense that the man might feel the need for a little extra caution during his travels, especially with the current trend of his partners in crime being violently removed from society. 

Their first hiccup was discovered as they circled off the coast of Guatemala. While One attempting to negotiate with an illegal airstrip for the right to land and refuel, via Five as translator, Two was looking up manifests of the major airports for something to do, only to discover all three of Obolensky’s private jets were headed for Guatemala, one for each international airport.

“The crazy fucker’s doing a scramble,” she told One, as if the guy didn’t have enough on his plate.

“A what now?” he asked between negotiations.

She pulled her tablet up for him to see. “Obolensky’s got a jet in each major airport. He’s gonna scramble all his cargo and personnel. You’re sure he’s in the plane we’re following, right?”

And One broke into a cold sweat because, no, he wasn’t.

“Cobán Airport is right in the center, they must be doing the exchange there,” Two said, looking just as stressed as One, “but we can’t take him in the open, an airport will be too big.”

One already had a new plan forming in his mind. “Five, you can tell the asshole to fuck off, he’s not getting anything. We’re going to Cobán.”

The new plan, though shaky at best, was to get to Cobán before Oblensky, bug the whole place like hell and keep a close eye on all movement. If they met somewhere secluded enough, they could take Obolensky there and then. If not, they’d tail Obolensky to his end destination and grab him at his new retirement home.

Turns out Cobán Airport barely consisted of much more than a single rickety old building and a runway and it was too late to turn around once they’d broken the cloud cover. They’d essentially set themselves up for ambush.

There was a collective tense sigh as One explained the reality of the situation.

“It’s fine!” he tried to reassure them. “We’ll just wait for everyone to land then we’ll do something,” like it was supposed to sound like a cohesive plan.

“But what are we  _ actually doing _ ?” Two pressed.

“C’mon man, give us something to work with,” Three was trying to be encouraging but it was only getting on One’s nerves.

“I don’t know! Fuck, just let me think for a second!” he snapped, his eyes squeezed shut and brow furrowed from the effort of coming up with literally anything.

The plane landed with a slight scuffle and bump, taxied to the end in complete silence. The tense silence pressed on as Seven shut down all systems and joined the team as One deliberated with himself.

“Okay, here’s the fucking plan,” he finally decided. “We’re going to wait for all three planes to land, then we’re going to take all three at the same time. Obolensky’s gonna be armed to the fucking teeth so we’re going to wait for them to come out of their planes to do the scramble. I want Seven and Three up top of that control tower and dropping guys on my signal. The rest of us are going to hang back until they figure out where the nest is, let them take as many down as they can before we start a skirmish.”

It was a terrible plan. Everyone would be far too exposed, there was no cover so to speak of besides the planes, they had no idea how many men Obolensky was going to have now that there were three planes instead of one, but no one could think of anything better. They all braced themselves for the clusterfuck to come.

It went, predictably, to shit. Obolensky’s guards somehow managed to pick out and pin down the nest in the first five minutes. With less than ten guys dropped, they were forced to skirmish far too early, and way outnumbered at something like five hostiles per person. It wasn’t looking spectacular. Better yet, no one noticed a plane taxiing away until it had already taken off. 

It took an hour to turn the tide and beat down the enemy, then another hour for One to hack the abandoned planes and track Obolensky’s flight path to his intended destination in Mauritius. They scrambled back into their own jet, licking their wounds, and so began the world’s slowest, most boring and simultaneously stressful pursuit.

The flight took the better part of twenty hours, including a hasty stopover in some part of the African continent to refuel. One was thankful that he, Seven and Two could rotate on shifts flying, because any down time he had was spent purely stressing about things out of his control. Two, despite the absolutely insane stunts she pulled on the ground, managed to get away relatively unscathed. Three lost a molar when he was smacked across the face with the end of an assault rifle, but remained his usual unfazed self. Four had done well to hold his own, despite his relative inexperience and Five had stuck close by him and covered his back, keeping as out of the way as possible but a close eye on the team in case of any injuries. Seven, surprisingly, sustained the most injuries consisting of a grazed shoulder and several minor lacerations as a result of ricochets and shrapnel from being pinned down in the nest. One was just thankful Five wasn’t elbow deep in guts trying to save someone’s life during the flight. 

Having checked, then double checked the status of his team, One turned his attention back to the task ahead. For starters, he didn’t have a single idea about what to do once they landed. Where were they going to get a vehicle? How were they going to track Obolensky on the ground? Where were they even going to land in the first place? 

When raking his brain came up with no good answers, he turned to combing through documents instead. By some miracle of god, Obolensky’s plane actually appeared on the manifest for the major international airport. He double and triple checked, just in case he was just seeing what he wanted to see, but it really was a stroke of dumb ass luck. He scrambled for a phone, then wrangled Two to translate. Fifteen minutes later, they’d bribed someone in the control tower handsomely to delay Obolensky’s landing by a couple hours so that they could land one after the other. 

They formed a basic plan of attack, actually pulling up a map of the airport in advance this time to get at least a sense of what to expect. They guessed Obolensky probably had at most a third of his personal security left at best considering the capacity of his jet. From there, as long as they could corner them well enough, they should be able to mount an assault and nab the slimy bastard. One could only pray it played out as straightforward as the brief.

Time seemed to both drag on and pass in a blink of an eye as they waited to land. One could tell his team was exhausted, even though the majority of them had slept throughout the flight. He could only hope that Obolensky’s men were equally worn out or they were all in deep shit.

Their bribed traffic controller sent them Obolensky’s landing information as they approached the airport and One and Two scrambled to form a definitive assault plan as Seven landed them closely after the Russian plane. The plan was straightforward enough. Obolensky was going to deplane from the privacy of a hanger, which served the Ghosts’ purposes perfectly. There would be no need for any kind of fancy attack formation since they’d be cornering themselves. It would simply be to get hostiles out of the way and grab Obolensky from his jet. 

There was a only short distance to cover once they had landed, but upon finally reaching the private hanger, they spotted a small convoy of SUVs parked alongside the jet and realised they forgot to expect that Obolensky would’ve ordered extra security to meet him on arrival. Nevertheless, the plan stayed the same. Aside from the jet and three vehicles sitting in the dead center, the hangar was bare, leaving all hostiles out in the open as easy pickings. Unfortunately this meant the ghosts also had no cover to work with, but with any luck the element of surprise would give them the upper hand.

The team had a handful of grenades deployed in short order which had the SUVs up on flames, taking a good number of hostiles with them. With their cover blown, they took advantage of the brief window of confusion they’d created to make a quick advance into the hangar.

All things considered, the skirmish went better than expected. One, Two and Four who had each come across even matches, spent the vast majority of the time wrestling with a single opponent. Thankfully, Three was in an efficient kind of mood, his quick trigger finger and quicker reflexes had him ploughing through guys as he marched towards the jet like no big deal. Seven kept towards the back, Five close behind him, both providing covering fire for the rest of the team. Things seemed to be going well enough until Three caught someone pulling a hold out pistol from their jacket, from where they’d been gunned down, and taking aim at Two. The hitman dove without thinking, of course, barely getting his body in the line of fire and taking two shots in his side before Seven could put the guy down for good. The medic rushed to his side, though she could barely do anything besides provide covering fire as Three attempted to recover enough to scramble to the relative safety of the jet’s wheels. 

With Three down for the moment, Five tending to him, and everyone else still grappling with their own opponents, it seemed like the tide was about to turn against them. She looked around, hoping she’d be able to find someone to cover her to give her a chance to look over Three. Four was the closest to them, while everyone else was spread out a fair distance away, but he wouldn’t be any help at all. He’d been all but pinned down, his two hands on the muzzle of a machine gun as the man above him attempted to point it towards his head, firing intermittently and almost certainly burning his hands as he did.

_ “Prekrati!”  _ a voice came from the entrance of the jet, wobbly but loud enough to be heard.

And there he was, Obolensky in all his slimy glory, held up by the scruff of his exorbitant blazer, Seven behind him with his gun pointed firmly on his head and the glow of the jet’s lights inside making him look like an honest to goodness modern day Jesus.

Everyone froze and the hangar went deathly silent.

_ “Vstan',” _ Obolensky spoke again, and his guards, after a moment’s hesitation, begrudgingly dropped their weapons.

Two took the opportunity to finally knock out her opponent with a solid hook, leaving the man to crumple as she sprinted towards Three.

_ “Deja de moverte!” _ Five was hissing at the man as she tried to make an assessment of his wounds.  _ "Tengo que checar que tan grave está." _

Three managed to grin sheepishly, unable to stop his hands from shooting towards his side any time the doctor poked or prodded to try and see what was going on.  _ "Ay doc, no te lo tomes personal, ya sabes que no me gusta que me revisen, me cagan los hospitales." _

Five shot him a look, fire in her eyes promising retribution.  _ "Si te mueres porque no puedes parar de moverte como un niño chiquito, Camille va a matarte y juro por dios que la voy a ayudar." _

At least with that threat, the man ducked his head apologetically and did his best to squirm a little less.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Two asked as she all but skidded to a stop by her boyfriend’s side.

Five’s voice was somewhat distant as she focused on Three. “The bullets were so small, it’s an eighty percent chance he’ll be back to normal in a couple weeks but I need to get him back to base and run tests to make sure he hasn’t punctured anything and we need to leave  _ now _ .”

If there ever was anyone who could kick everyone else’s ass into high gear, it was Two, and being personally motivated in that moment, she had everyone back on the jet in a matter of minutes.

Once they were in the air, and Obolensky had been sedated and left to drool into the carpet, they assessed their situation. One, Five and Seven had made it out mostly unscathed, while Four had sustained some substantial burns on his palms, but otherwise didn’t suffer anything too serious. Two suspected she’d cracked a rib, but refused to be seen to until Three’s condition was completely under control, claiming she was more than capable of treating herself.

“Horse shit,” Three had told her, alongside Five’s unbelieving glare.

She smacked the arm on his good side halfheartedly in response and said, “Just don’t fucking die, Javi.”

One collapsed into his copilot seat next to Seven as soon as Five had deemed that she had the situation under control in the back.

“God, I’m exhausted,” he groaned. “I just wanna sleep for a month.”

“Y’all crack a whip, I’ll tell you that for free,” Seven agreed. “At least Eight isn’t here trying to plan the next assault for the second we land.”

One heaved a deep and heavy sigh. “Y’know, I had this weird feeling this whole time like there was something I was forgetting and now I realise that what I’d forgotten was her.”

A moment of silence passed before Seven spoke again. “You think she’s okay? Spending all that time on her own?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” One admitted, hand haphazardly feeling through his backpack for his pager.

No messages, and none on his phone either. He chewed on his lip anxiously as he shot a message off to her.  _ ETA 20HRS. 3 NEEDS MED ASSIST _

The reply was almost instant.

_ COPY. HOW BAD? _

One had no idea whether he was relieved or not to see it.  _ IDK. 5 NEEDS TESTS. _

_ COPY _

A minute passed, then his pager trilled again.

_ MISSION SUCCESS? _

One wanted to laugh, because of course she would ask.  _ TARGET SECURED _

_ COPY _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prekrati! = Stop!  
> Vstan' = Stand down  
> Deja de moverte! Tengo que checar que tan grave está. = Stop moving! I have to check how bad it is.  
> Ay doc, no te lo tomes personal, ya sabes que no me gusta que me revisen, me cagan los hospitales. = Doc, don't take it so personally, you know I don't like check ups, I hate hospitals.  
> Si te mueres porque no puedes parar de moverte como un niño chiquito, Camille va a matarte y juro por dios que la voy a ayudar. = If you die because you can't stop moving like a little kid, Camille will kill you and I swear to god I'll help her.
> 
> Thank you again to my wonderful friend Kirjava3456airbender for these translations and for putting up with me asking a hundred and thirty million questions about these last two chapters. Also massive thanks to TalkingGrape for also putting up with me forcing her to proofread this literal entire story so far.
> 
> Please consider checking out their works. They're both extraordinarily talented and the kindest, sweetest beans I've ever met and they deserve recognition for it.
> 
> Also I do apologise for the delayed updates. You'd like to think with being stuck home all day I'd be able to write more but that is apparently not the case. Thanks for all your amazing support thus far. I really do appreciate every comment and kudos left. I'm just too shy to reply x


	14. A Start

Eight was waiting by the tarmac when they returned to base, leant against an SUV that she’d brought down to transport everyone back to the main hub of the base, looking relaxed and remarkably put together in comparison to the last time they’d seen her. The team had only been away for a little over three days, but she seemed to have made weeks worth of progress. Her purposeful and confident stride had returned, as had the steady set and evenness of her posture, her unwavering gaze and her mechanical efficiency.

She didn’t bother to say hello as she boarded, seconds after the jet door touched down. “What do you need for Three?” she asked Five, looking down at the man in question, lying sedated, but not completely unconscious, across a row of seats. 

The hitman grinned dopily up at her in response.

“There’s a bullet still inside that might have caused organ injury. I need to run scans before I can take it out,” Five replied, words coming out in rapidfire as if the two had been discussing the situation prior.

  
Eight had Three moved from the jet to the infirmary in record time, dumping the rest of the team and Obolensky by the common area on the way. Exhausted from their op, they simply shackled their sedated prisoner to the front of the building and made their way in.

The kitchen greeted them with the smell of thick spices and basmati. They dumped their bags by the door and wandered further in, discovering a large pot of curry keeping warm in the oven and a full rice cooker. A folded note sat by the cooker, which Seven snatched up to read.

_ I have said and done some regrettable things in the last few days, and my actions have not been those of a responsible team leader. I have failed you in the only ways that matter. I owe you all sincere, individual apologies, but for now I hope this meal may be a start. _

The letter didn’t phase Seven at all, moving on immediately after reading it aloud. “Well, call me a product of my upbringing but food is always a good place to start,” he declared, fishing out a stack of bowls from the cupboard and setting himself to work, dishing out a generous mound of rice into each as Two joined him to ladle curry on top.

The first serving was demolished in a matter of minutes in absolute silence. Since they hadn’t intended to be away for longer than a day at most, they’d mostly been living off the emergency rations that were stowed aboard the jet. Truthfully, Eight could’ve served plain instant noodles with ketchup and called it spaghetti bolognese and the team would’ve been grateful to eat something that wasn’t either freeze dried, preserved in a mountain of salt or a literal can of Chef Boyardee’s Beefaroni. (Even Three wasn’t able to stomach the canned pasta meal.)

The plates were all just about licked clean after the second serving and the team were strewn about the adjoining lounge room in various stages of food coma when Two went to make herself a tea.

“Damn,” she muttered aloud, catching everyone’s attention.

“What?” One asked, dreading whatever Two had discovered, but not concerned enough to drag his body from the couch or his eyes from level 879 of Candy Crush.

“Eight’s been busy,” she said, closing the doors to the pantry. “Looks like a professional kitchen hand’s been through it.”

“I thought for a second you were going to tell me she’d replaced all our food with protein powders and supplements,” One replied with no small amount of relief in his voice as Seven got up to have a look.

“Oh  _ damn _ , she  _ has _ been busy,” he let out a whistle of appreciation as he looked around. “I could get used to this.”

The pantry was nothing short of pristine. Everything was organised neatly, grains and flours all had their own containers, spices in jars in their own dedicated rack, canned goods all in their categories, snacks and instant foods all had their own designated shelf space. 

Five all but fell into the kitchen before Seven could do any further admiring.

“I was told there’s food,” she said bluntly, dumping herself into her seat at the table. It had only been an hour since they’d returned but her hair was a mess and her eyes were dark and sunken. Out of everyone, Five had rested the least in the last day or so, keeping a vigilant eye on Three’s condition for the entire flight, then remaining alert enough to run scans and perform the necessary surgery.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Two asked, sliding into the seat beside her as Seven pushed a steaming helping of curry and rice in front of her.

The doctor gave a nod of thanks, shovelling a generous bite into her mouth, barely chewing before swallowing with a sigh. “The second bullet grazed the large intestine, but only barely so I didn’t really need to do anything there. I’m going to run him on a course of antibiotics and he’ll be well enough to be up and about in a couple days, but  _ no strenuous activities _ .”

“Great!” One cheered tiredly from sofa, where he was now fully stretched out. “Here’s an idea: No ops until Three’s healed. I’m fucking exhausted.”

There were murmured sounds of agreement all round. 

“Where’s Eight, by the way?” One asked Five.

“Dragging Obolensky to some kinda lock-up, I didn’t really ask. I was hungry,” she said around another mouthful of curry.

“Lock up?” One asked. “We don’t have a lock-up.”

Five just shrugged and continued shovelling food in. “I dunno man, she’s been alone for like four freakin’ days. You thought she was gonna just sit pretty and twiddle her thumbs? I’m surprised she didn’t build us a whole dorm to live in. She’s already rejigged my storage for the third time.”

“She did the pantry too,” Seven chimed in, to which Five nodded and pointed towards him as if to say ‘see what I’m saying?’.

“Probably done up the whole armoury… Wouldn’t be surprised if she fixed all the leaks and creaky hinges around the base too,” the doctor continued to list off.

“She better not have been digging through the office,” One muttered to himself, though he didn’t have much hope.

It was some hours later, well after the team abandoned their dirty dishes in the sink, promising each other they’d clean up in the morning, when Four shuffled back into the kitchen. With his hands wrapped in bandages and his palms blistered and swollen to shit, he’d barely been able to work a spoon for long enough to get a decent amount of food in before the team had abandoned the common area for their respective beds. Four was a big eater and his growling stomach was not going to let him sleep until he got at least another serving in. Nor was the fact that he felt completely gross considering he wasn’t able to wash himself with his bandaged hands. First of all he couldn’t get his bandages wet, and even if he could, anything above lukewarm felt white hot on his burns and he wasn’t about to take a cold shower in winter.

He almost jumped a foot into the air when he spotted Eight sitting at the dining table, illuminated only by the laptop screen in front of her. “Oh, hey,” she greeted him casually, a faint smile on her lips, clearly amused by the man’s shock.

“Jesus! What the fuck are you sitting around in the dark like a creep for?” he grumbled, sliding the door shut behind him and flicking the lights on.

“Wasn’t so dark when I sat down,” she said by way of explanation, shrugging with one shoulder. She checked her watch and Four was quick to notice it was the same one One and Five had bought for her in Dubai. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” she asked. “You’ve been up for like three days straight.”

“I’m hungry,” he deflected, fumbling with both hands to open the fridge.

“Sit,” Eight told him, standing to take over. “I’ll fix it for you.”

“It’s fine-”

_ “Sit,” _ she cut him off with a sharp look. “I’m not about to have you burn yourself more than you already are.”

Four was quick to back off, wary of her temper from their last interaction, sitting himself down quietly at the table. The room descended into an uncomfortable silence.

Eight had a steaming plate of curry and rice placed in front of him in short order, leaving him to eat in silence as she went back to her work. Aside from a meagre “thanks” nothing else was said between them.

When he finished eating an entire age later (which he was sure Eight was judging him for) he got up and was completely unsurprised to find the kitchen sink empty and shining.

“Just leave it in there,” Eight told him without looking up from her screen, fingers never breaking their pace as they tick-tacked across the keys. 

“Oh, okay,” he said, letting the dish fall into the sink with a loud clatter. He stood there a moment longer, unsure of what to do. He wasn’t ready to go to bed- probably couldn’t sleep if he tried- but he didn’t know if he wanted to just sit in silence in a room with someone who didn’t seem to have the time of day for him either.

The sound of typing keys behind him stopped and suddenly the silence in the room was all the more deafening.

“You alright, kid?” Eight asked.

Four turned to face the woman to find she’d closed her laptop and had her full attention fixed on him.

“Uh-” Four didn’t know what to say, unsure whether he should tell her what the honest truth was. But Eight, even in her lowest point, had never put his- or any other team member’s- best interests in second place. Surely things hadn’t changed, right? He considered what he knew as Eight waited patiently for his answer, looking professionally concerned as she always did. “I can’t sleep… cause I feel gross… And I can’t shower,” he managed to get out in a mumble, gesturing with his bandaged hands.

Eight thankfully didn’t ask him to repeat himself. “How about I run you a bath and help you clean up?” she offered. Then when he baulked audibly at the idea of being buck naked in front of her, she quickly added, “It’s not weird- I’ve done it for teammates in the past. If you need a hand, you need a hand and that’s what I’m here for, right?”

“Yeah… I guess,” he agreed eventually. 

Eight was nothing short of a proper gentleman as Four got into the tub, waiting outside the bathroom door until he called out to give her the all clear. He had his knees drawn up to try and hide his junk when she came in, but she grabbed a low stool and sat down behind him, effectively obscuring her entire view of his front. She worked quickly, scrubbing half a week’s worth of dirt and grime from his neck and back with a washcloth, letting the hot towel rest over shoulders as deft fingers worked his hair into a lather. At this point, Four didn’t even care if she saw his junk. The tension being relieved from his body as she worked was well worth the mild embarrassment. He let his eyes fall shut and his head dip back as he relaxed further into the hot water.

“I’m sorry,” Eight said after a short while.

“Huh?” Four asked, eyes blinking open and sitting up, because he wasn’t convinced he hadn’t just dreamed it up.

“I’m sorry for lashing out at you,” she repeated herself, continuing to work at the grime on his arms. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you. I was being shitty because I thought everyone was babying me for no reason- and that’s not an excuse- but that’s why I was so horrid.”

“It’s okay,” Four replied, his voice soft in the wake of her sincerity.

“It’s not,” Eight disagreed, then after a pause, “but thanks.”

Four closed his eyes and reclined into the bath again as Eight continued to scrub over his body, and he had almost slipped into a light nap when she spoke again.

“Andrea.” Her voice was so soft he’d almost missed it.

“Huh?” It felt a bit like deja vu as he brought himself back into the waking world, blinking and sitting up. 

“My name’s Andrea, but my brothers back home called me Andy,” Eight explained quietly, looking incredibly interested in the washcloth in her hands before she dared a glance up at him, looking more vulnerable than he’d ever seen her before.

Four just grinned and extended a bandaged hand. “Billy. Nice to meet you.”


	15. Busybody

It didn’t escape Billy’s notice when Eight started appearing by his side at random intervals of the day making casual conversation before surreptitiously asking if he needed his bandages changed or if he needed a hand with any variety of tasks for that fact. The first instance was at breakfast.

“Have you been to see Five yet?” she’d asked him, sipping her tea across the bar from him.

“I don’t think she’s even awake yet,” he replied absentmindedly as he struggled to butter his toast. “Why do I need to see her anyway?”

“You should change your bandages over and get some more cream on your burns,” she replied matter of factly. Then after a beat, “Do you want a hand with that?” she nodded towards his breakfast.

“I’m fine,” Billy grumbled. He was not about to have someone make him a sandwich like he was in primary school all over again. 

Eight simply threw her free hand up in surrender and stepped back from the bar, seating herself at the dining table before continuing to sip at her tea. “How long do you think One’s going to have us grounded until we kick things back up?” she asked him.

He paused his buttering to look up at her, a comically incredulous frown deepening on his brow the longer he stared.

“What?” she asked back.

“ _You’re_ asking _me_ about logistics?” he asked, maintaining his frown.

She just shrugged, “I’m just asking what you think.”

“Yeah but, you two never ask us. You just… do stuff,” he pointed out, gesturing with his butterknife.

She shrugged with one shoulder, the barest hint of an embarrassed flush brushing her cheeks that she attempted to hide behind a prolonged sip as she finished her mug. “I’m trying something new.”

Billy supposed he could appreciate the effort. He quirked his lip and huffed a small sigh, then set his butterknife down. “Actually, I changed my mind. Wouldn’t mind if you could help me butter this second bit of toast. It’s gonna be cold by the time I finish up.”

Eight got up without a word and reached over the counter, taking the utensil and making quick work of the small task. Surprisingly, Billy didn’t feel so weird about having her help him. She silently pointed at the jam jar with the butterknife, brow raised to ask ‘This too?’ to which he just nodded.

He was sat at the dining table with his still warm toast when she pushed a cup of tea in front of him.

“Oh- Is it-?”

“Yorkshire, no sugar, heavy on the milk,” Eight cut him off.

He eyed her suspiciously but took a sip anyway, pleasantly surprised to find it was just as he liked it. “When’d you learn how I like my tea?”

She shrugged back, taking a sip of her own tea. “Dunno. Just noticed one day I guess?”

And he knew that was a lie because Eight always paid close attention to everything whether she meant to or not.

She stood awkwardly by the end of the table, hovering for a moment longer, then made some comment on checking on Three before making a hasty exit.

He ran into Seven later in the morning, who was apparently on his way to find Five. Eight had apparently had a word with him about giving Five some kind of formal gun training.

“Can you believe One’s been sending her in the field without any training? Stuck a gun in her hand and told her to have a nice day?” Seven asked incredulously.

Billy wasn’t able to get a word in edgewise before the marksman continued on his furious rant.

“She could’ve killed any one of us! Or herself! What the fuck was he thinking?”

Billy silently let the man vent out his anger then go along his merry way before he could accidentally let it slip that he, also, had never received any kind of training. Maybe he could go see Eight about it once he was healed up. He had the feeling she might be less inclined to murdering him.

And potentially more inclined to murdering One.

The difference in the roles between One and Eight had become clearer and clearer the longer they’d worked together. One had taken something of a back seat, but remained the final say in every issue. The man had effectively become something of a bankroller and an operations manager in one. Even though he’d softened somewhat since Turgistan, he remained professionally distant from the team at large. Billy used to often wonder if the guy ever got lonely on his own, but he’d had that particular thought less and less once Eight had integrated into the team and spent the majority of her time as his go-to. 

Eight, on the other hand, was always busy sticking her nose in every issue she could find. She cast a wide net and was thorough in her assessment of individual problems, and where she could not rectify something by her own means, she would rope One in to help her do so. Since she kept such a close eye on the team’s individual needs, she had grown far closer to the team than One. They often sought her out for assistance or advice, and she always knew what to say or do the same way a wise old friend would. Rarely, though, would it escape their notice that while she knew just about everything where they were concerned, they hardly knew the first thing about her. Eight kept her professional distance, much in the same way One did. They rarely saw her in the common area as she often opted to stay in One’s office while she was on base, and when they did, she generally kept to herself and saw herself out in short order. And Billy doubted she had shared her past with anyone besides himself.

When he went to see Three that afternoon, the hitman told him Eight had been staying close by him since they’d returned. That she’d brought dinner and had been playing nurse, even sleeping in the ward for Five’s peace of mind so the doctor could get some proper rest. Apparently she’d pounced on Two when the ex CIA agent had come to visit her boyfriend in the middle of the night, holding her right to visitation over her head until the woman agreed to get looked over. Two had begrudgingly agreed once it became clear she was not going to wrestle her way out of Eight’s grip, much to Three’s amusement.

Two had huffed and puffed and rolled her eyes dramatically as Eight poked and prodded, pretending like it didn’t hurt as badly as it did, then only quietly disclosing that the pain was “maybe a seven and a bit” out of ten when Eight told her off for being dishonest. The stand-in nurse ended up letting her go with some ibuprofen, a cooling patch and only the barest of resigned sighs, leaving the couple to enjoy their time together. Three had told the story with a fair amount of gusto for a man who’d been shot twice just the day before, but he assured Billy that, according to Eight’s assessment, he would be back on his feet come morning.

Just as it was starting to seem like she was in every place at the same time, he stopped hearing about her altogether. His first concern was that maybe she’d taken off again to do some job, taking advantage of the fact that the team was too wrecked from their impromptu chase across the globe to stop her, but his fears were somewhat quelled when he saw One sipping a coffee in the kitchen in an absolute daze. The guy was pretty calm so it was a good sign Eight hadn’t run off. As terrible as she was with communicating her plans, Billy knew she always filled One in at some point.

He saw Five just before dinner to redress his hands. The blisters looked just as bad as they were the day before, but Five reassured him that it was showing good signs of improvement. They made small talk about whatever inane shit came to mind as she worked, and Billy tried to not look too interested when Five conspiratorially revealed to him that Eight had come looking for her after dinner the night before, fretting over her like a mother hen until she’d all but tucked her into bed herself.

Billy left the doctor’s office thinking hard. If he’d done his maths right, which he was pretty sure he had, Eight had gone and checked in on everyone (except One, but he didn’t count) since they’d landed. Billy couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as he made his way over to the kitchen, Eight was nothing if not efficient.

There was laughter, followed by a seething line of insults and the sound of something being thrown as he passed the office. The familiar sounds could really only mean one thing, which was that One had let Eight back into the office and that things were going back to normal. While the sounds of the pair arguing were familiar, Billy didn’t expect to see One storm out of the work space and slam the door behind him in a huff.

“Everythin’ okay?” he asked by way of greeting as the man joined him in the direction of the kitchen.

“Just peachy,” One replied shortly, stewing in his thoughts for a moment before unleashing them onto Billy. “I’m gonna murder her one day, you all know that right?” he asked in his standard casual-but-manic tone. 

Billy just snorted. “Why’s that?”

“She sent me off like a kid to dinner! She had the fucking nuts to say ‘you can’t work on an empty stomach’ to me, _the absolute hypocrite!_ Do you know how she works? Forget eating, she barely blinks! It’s fucking creepy!”

Billy knew there wasn’t any malice behind One’s words, but he tried to be encouraging anyway. “Aw c’mon now, you know she’s just worried about us.”

“Yeah, well,” One softened with no good come back, “I liked her better when she was a total bitch.”

He couldn’t help but laugh, and even One cracked a small smirk. “Sure you do.”

“Is she back to business as usual?” Billy couldn’t help but ask.

One made a kind of grimaced face as he thought. “Not exactly. She’s still got stuff planned a trillion steps in advance like she used to, but she’s not as intense as she used to be. She hasn’t jumped down my throat to go after anyone yet. It’s kinda weird.”

“Yeah, I get what you mean,” he agreed quietly as they arrived. “You think she’s gotten soft?”

One scoffed loudly as he pulled the door open. “Not hardly.”

Billy didn’t know if he felt the same, but he kept that to himself.


	16. Not Exactly

“Not exactly” had been an apt way to put it. Eight managed to make her way back into the office through sheer persistence, but not how One had expected it. He eventually caved after the woman had sat for hours in near silence in the corner of the office, reading some beat up, op-shop novel as he attempted to get his bearings in the reorganised space. When her uncharacteristically docile behaviour finally got too weird to bear, he’d shouted at her to find him the files he’d been unable to find in the reorganisation. It had clearly gone exactly to Eight’s plan if the way she leapt into action was anything to go by.

She began pulling files out in order of priority, dumping them in front of One, who was now thoroughly irritated by her deceit.

“You’ve been working,” he accused her.

Eight looked genuinely affronted by the suggestion as she continued to dig out paperwork and scoffed, “I’ll have you know I was perfectly well behaved.”

The man rolled his eyes and made an effort to suppress the groan that followed, opening the first folder on the pile.

“I was!” Eight insisted.

“Uhuh,” One sounded entirely unconvinced. “Just tell me your stupid plan, Eight” he said instead, ready to just get it over with.

The woman grinned widely and launched into what could only be described as a discount TED talk.

Bizarrely, though, as soon as she was done running him through everything and ensuring he was across the new material and her preliminary guide, she left him alone to manage the rest, claiming she had responsibilities to tend to in the infirmary.

“The Doc’s gun training is going great, by the way,” she mentioned on her way out. “Seven thinks he’ll have her shooting at an intermediate level by the end of the week.”

“Huh?” One was blindsided by the swift change in topic.

“We’re going to ground her until she can put a bullet between your eyes at fifty paces,” she carried on like it wasn’t a thinly veiled threat. 

One’s mouth gaped and flapped as he struggled to connect the dots. “I- What-?” 

A scowl tugged at her lips as the frown deepened on her brow. “Seriously, dude?”

“I was doing stuff! I didn’t have time to think about it!” One said, in lieu of a coherent defence.

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Eight spat out, venomous. “It would’ve taken you less than thirty seconds to realise she needed the training and then to make a comment in mine, or Seven’s, or Two’s direction to get the ball rolling. Actually, you know what?” her tone changed abruptly. “You shouldn’t even be asking one of us. She should’ve had this training before going into the field for the first time.”

“How was I supposed to know?! I haven’t-!”

“You should’ve known!” Eight shouted back. It was a rare occasion that Eight was the first to lose her temper. Generally she only raised her voice to match One’s in their shouting matches. “You should’ve known better! You’re their leader! You have resources! You could’ve had everyone up to snuff- a whole team of commandos if you wanted to! But you didn’t because you’re selfish and impatient! I’ve seen your wall of targets. You’ve crossed off three out of nine, so you’ve been in operation for eighteen months at  _ minimum _ , but you’ve been planning for years, right?”

One almost choked up at the question. “Wh-?”

“Don’t fucking ask me how I know. I know because I know, alright?” she snapped. “So you’ve been planning for years, probably got a stack of potential candidates but you ever stopped to think maybe they need additional training before you kick things off? Oh, what Doc just patches wounds and does nothing else? Then why the hell doesn’t she stay on base?”

“Because we need her in the field!”

“Field medics get the same combat training as their comrades. Don’t pretend like you don’t know that. I know you know better.”

And to that, One had no response, because he did know better. And she was right, he had been impatient. Being in the thick of one of Rovach’s gas attacks had his blood boiling and he wanted the man dead as soon as humanly possible. And when they miraculously managed to pull it off alive (for the most part), he thought things were great. They were on a roll and wanted to move onto the next target. It seemed logical at the time anyway.

Sensing that her point had been made, Eight heaved a small sigh and recollected herself. “We’ll need her here to make sure Three and Four make a full recovery anyway.” And left.

Stranger still was when she reappeared that evening, striding from the door to his desk to shut One’s laptop right on top of his fingers.

“What the fuck-!?”

“Dinner time, prick.” 

One scowled at the thought-to-be retired pet name. “Dinner time-!?”

“Now,” she cut him off with a look. “Don’t keep them waiting.”

One sputtered, unable to form words to express how stupified he felt, which Eight took full advantage of, walking around the table to pick him up by the arm and frog marching him to the door.

“What about you? Fucking hypocrite,” he accused.

“I’ll join you right after I check on the prisoner,” she told him. “You’re no good to me on an empty stomach,” she said as she pushed him out the door. 

“What’s the fucking rush to get me there, then? If you’re not going to be there too?” One yelled from the other side of the threshold. 

“Hey! You’re looking at tonight’s sous chef. Only reason I’m here is because you’re ignoring your texts,”

With his feathers thoroughly ruffled and defence depleted, One could do little more than let out a prolonged groan of frustration and storm off with a long string of curses in tow.

To One’s dismay, Eight stuck by her word and joined the team just as they dug in. (He’d been looking forward to throwing “hypocrite” in her face for at least a week.) Judging by the collective cheerful reception upon her arrival, it seemed like she’d done the rounds to make nice with everyone. He begrudgingly supposed he couldn’t be mad about the rapport.

Even though Eight had been part of the team for a little over two months at this point, it was the first time she’d sat down and eaten with the team. One had known from the beginning that she never intended to get to know any of them. She’d joined under strictly professional pretences, all but negotiating a contract wherein once Charles Dixon was either captured or terminated, she’d be free to move on in whichever manner she chose. Looking at her now, as the team bantered animatedly around her, the way she readily indulged their antics, though still withdrawn; One wondered if she might end up sticking around a little longer.

As dinner drew to an end, the team’s collective zeal simmered down to an easy and playful dialogue, helped along by a couple glasses of wine.

“So what now?” Three asked, directing the question to Eight. “What’s next?”

“I’m going to try and flush out a target that’ll get us directly to Dixon-,”

“You are?” It was the first he’d heard of it.

“-but in the meantime I think we should have One, Two and Seven out on collection missions. Three can join in at the end of the week when he’s not likely to tear himself open.”

There were some mumbles of acknowledgement around the table.

“Costa from New York finally flipped on his guys, so things are starting to snowball,” she added, leading to some surprised murmurs. “He named and shamed twenty-odd colleagues of his and there’s chatter about how those guys are gonna fold on other guys. I’m going to leave those connections off the list, see if they won’t shake themselves out for us.”

One raised a brow. “And where did you hear this  _ chatter _ ?”

“Trade secret,” she told him with a sly wink to which he scowled at.

“Ass,” he muttered under his breath.

“ _ Anyway _ ,” she continued pointedly, “We can reduce the list tonight and have a reworked schedule by tomorrow, ready for missions to restart the day after.”

So Eight was back to business as usual, but not exactly. But maybe it was a good thing.


	17. Old Habits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the three month delay quarantine kills the desire to write.

Apparently Eight had been working on flushing out her target for several months. Dixon had dropped off the radar once he’d realised his precious hard drive had gone missing months back in Dubai. One and Eight had assumed he pulled every favour he had to pull it off, because the man did a damn good job of it. One day he was within their sights, the next he’d dissolved into the face of the earth. 

Which brought Eight to her target: one Harley Theodore Xavier Dixon, nephew and godson of Charles Dixon. Harley was a young and fun guy who liked to go out and sleep around in equal measures of excess. Naturally, Eight was working an angle to exploit that. Unbeknownst to the team, she’d been chatting the guy up on different social medias, dating apps and the like ever since Dixon had given them the slip. So far she’d run through twenty-odd different personas to try and figure out his type. With some luck, one excruciating month later, she’d managed to make two stick. 

The first was “Aubrey”, a city sleek and beach chic type. She almost exclusively wore linen in the day, every photo on her instagram was aesthetically faded or unfocused film, making it easy to obscure her actual features. Eight had constructed her makeup to be the “everyday look” that was actually contoured to the high heavens.

The second was “Madison” a rave-going goth type. Her makeup was nothing short of outrageous and she dressed in black and white and neon. Her instagram was full of witchy tattoos, rings on fingers with the nails painted black, and blurry, streaking neon clubs. Similarly to “Aubrey”, Eight disguised her features through makeup, but this time through extremes. The eyeliner was never the same shape- always bold and a bit abstract, she wore colour contacts frequently, and she kept copious facial piercings.

All in all, the two covers could not be further apart. Which is why One wasn’t particularly pleased when Eight came to him with her plan.

“Okay- I-” One had his head between his hands as he tried to take in Eight’s, frankly, batshit idea. “You’re telling me you’ve been catfishing this kid as two different women for over a month-”

“No, there were twenty three personas, but two have been successful in acquiring dates.”

He made a face at her pedantries and swatted iritably in her direction like it would wave her stupid attitude away. “Yeah, okay, whatever. So not only are you going to meet him for two dates, one as each woman, you’re going to do it back to back?”

“Yes,” she replied, easy as you please like she hadn’t just said some of the dumbest shit he’d ever heard in his life.

“So the first one as,” he glanced down at his laptop where Eight had sent the profiles, “Aubrey, and then another as,” he glanced down again, “Madison on the next night?”

“No, I’m going to see him as Aubrey for a dinner date, and if I’m not successful in getting back to his place, we’ll proceed to the second date at the club later that night as Madison.”

“It’s on the same night?!” One exclaimed, “You do realise he’s going to pick you out in a fucking second, right?”

Eight just snorted, “It’ll be fine,” and shoved a list of things at him. “Here’s all the shit I need. And I want Seven on bar in the club.”  
  


There were still a couple days to go before the dates, so Eight had to keep up appearances, often texting through dinner and remarking aloud how unimpressed and disappointed she was by Harley’s lackluster attempts at flirting. 

“Of all the morally reprehensible things I’ve done in this life, this might be the worst,” she’d once said at the dinner table.

“I literally watched you shoot an unarmed and restrained man in the dick,” One reminded her.

She looked up from her phone for the barest of moments to consider whether that, in fact, was worse, before shrugging and grunting her disagreement as she spooned more potato into her mouth.

“Billy, you don’t even know the things I would give to punch this guy in the face,” she uttered late one night, on the eve of the dates, as she lay on the couch, legs slung lazily over the armrest. It was the early hours of the morning but Harley was still going strong, bolstered by a several hour long coke binge as he attempted to keep “Madison” engaged in some fervid debate on horoscopes. It was not a good outlook for the evening to come.

Billy snorted back from the other couch, similarly laid out. “What’s he said now?”

Eight just sighed deeply as she typed out a suitably captivated and equally enthusiastic response. “Some shit about cuspers. I can’t believe how much shit I had to read for this guy.” 

“Alright, pop quiz:” Billy announced suddenly, “I’m a Leo, so tell me about me based on that.”

Eight heaved a sigh, guttural and full of resentment, to which Billy just laughed.

“Come oooooon, Andy,” he teased. “Or are you not as good as we think you are?” he challenged her.

Eight shot him a deathly stare and huffed. “Leos are cheerful, loyal, generous, creative people. Attractive qualities usually include being self-confident and funny. They love to be the centre of attention and admired, love lavish gifts and being doted on. On the other hand, they hate being ignored, making tough decisions and being disrespected. Sound about right?”

Billy just cackled in reply. “God, I cannot _wait_ to tell the guys you’re a horoscopes person now.”

Eight looked genuinely scandalised. _“You wouldn’t!_ It’s not even true anyway! It’s a cover!”

Billy just laughed in response. “I’m calling it now- you’re gonna bitch about mercury being in retrograde and shit within the week.”

“You’re such a wanker,” was all she said in reply, opting to go back to the now relatively easy conversation with Harley.

Billy woke up on the couch, a blanket haphazardly draped over him and Wally happily tucked under his legs. The morning light was dim and soft, suggesting it was still early. Though the air was crisp, the aroma of fresh coffee felt warm in his lungs, so he begrudgingly rolled off the couch, blanket still wrapped around him and trudged into the kitchen.

Eight was already there, of course, her back leant against the countertop with phone in one hand, her mug of coffee resting by her on the counter.

“Morning,” she greeted him, without so much as an upwards glance.

“It’s too early,” Billy complained back instead, swiping her mug and taking a long swig from it, finally eliciting eye contact from Eight in the form of a deadly glare. But the man wasn’t phased.

“It’s always too early for you,” she snorted back instead. “What are you doing today?”

He shrugged. “Still not allowed to do anything at the moment.”

“Okay, great,” she sounded pleased, “we’re gonna go to the shops.”

Billy pulled a face. “What for?”

“I need some stuff for the date,” she told him. Then, at the sight of his exaggerated eyerolls, “Relax bruv, I’m not going to make you watch me try shit on all day. I just need some things.”

Billy had been noticing when the two of them spent time together alone, Eight’s British accent would come to the surface, occasionally letting the odd bit of slang slip here and there. Each time it felt like he was getting to meet Andy, in place of Eight. He kept it to himself, lest he scare her off.

It occurred to Billy, as they made their way into town later that morning, that he had never been driven anywhere by the woman in question. Long story short- she drove like a maniac.

“Jeez,” he winced at one particularly sharp turn, knuckles white as he gripped the handholds for dear life, “I can’t tell who’s worse, you or Six.”

Eight let out a wicked cackle over the radio. “It’s me, for sure.”

The man blanched at her response and glared at her grinning expression. “Why the fuck do you sound so proud of that?”

“Just reliving the good old days. My rookie job was a getaway driver position back home,” she explained. “Had to pass the black cab knowledge test to move up from intel to field so it was an exciting time for me.”

“Still doesn’t explain your shitty driving,” Billy grimaced. 

“Call it a personal style.”

“Can’t believe you weren’t fired for this shit.”

The man was ultimately thankful to arrive at the mall intact.

As promised, Eight did not drag him around to watch her try on outfits, because of course she was too organised for that. (Her clothes were waiting to be collected from a tailor.) Apparently, the woman simply wanted company while she ran errands. 

The first half of their trip was tolerable enough. Billy spent the majority of the time making conversation and trailing aimlessly behind the woman as she collected the bits and bobs she’d ordered in advance. But then a jeweller caught her eye and Eight apparently couldn’t help but go in for a look.

Billy, being the delinquent heathen that he was, developed a severe case of itchy fingers once they’d hit upwards of twenty minutes in the same jewellery store. He couldn’t help it. Pickpocketing was second nature to him. While Eight had been carefully assessing and reassessing the same two display cases, Billy had already cased the store out of habit and was growing increasingly twitchy by the second. 

It wasn’t a particularly upmarket store, some pieces were behind glass, but most of their stock hung on gaudy rotating display stands. The staff weren’t paying close attention, too busy messing around on their phones. He positioned himself so his movements were hidden from the singular security camera as he eyed up a modest pair of gold, sparkly earrings and its matching necklace counterpart. He took a second, surreptitious glance around, then swiped the jewellery off the stand and stuffed it securely into the pocket of his hoodie.

“What do you think about this?” Eight asked suddenly, snapping Billy back to reality. 

The dangly silver earrings she held up weren’t anything to write home about but seemed nice enough, he supposed, so Billy shrugged apathetically, even though the fist in his pocket was wound tight with anxiety around the liberated goods. “They’re alright I guess.”

And apparently that was as much approval as she needed to make the purchase.

Billy made a point to keep his hands securely in his pockets to avoid temptation until they returned to the car.

To his amusement, once Eight had dumped everything in the boot her first course of action was to all but collapse dramatically into the driver seat, burying her face in her hands.

“What’s wrong with you?” Billy snorted.

“I just fucking hate shopping,” her muffled voice came from between her fingers.

He patted her head and laughed. “That makes two of us.”

She swatted at his hand, grumbling under her breath as she made to start the car back up. “What’d you swipe today anyway?” she asked as she reversed out of the parking spot.

Billy immediately broke out in a sweat. “Uh- I don’t- I didn’t-”

“Oh come off it,” she huffed impatiently. “Let’s see ‘em!”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then the man pulled the gold jewellery out from the safety of his pocket. The small crystals glinted and sparkled each time they drove under a light in the dim parking lot.

“Not too bad,” Eight complimented, easy as you like, as if Billy wasn’t a top thief and she’d spotted him like it was no big deal. As if Billy hadn’t just committed a pointless crime that could’ve had both of them caught mid-mission. “Who are you going to give it to?” she asked instead.

He pulled a face and scratched his head. “I dunno. Normally I just pawn it off for extra cash.”

The woman’s brow furrowed ever so slightly. “You know One’s card is effectively bottomless, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s different.”

She gave a half shrug and her brow unfurrowed. “Yeah, true.”

“Do you think Amelia will like them?” Billy asked after a moment.

Eight hummed thoughtfully. “I think she likes gold. She’ll appreciate it either way.”

There was another pause. “You won’t tell her how I got it, right?”

Eight chuckled around the straw of her iced coffee. “How you procure your goods is none of my business, mate.”

Amelia ended up giving Billy the evil eye until he fessed up to it, because the man was a terrible liar and the doctor spotted it about as soon as he stepped foot through the door. Eight laughed when he came crying to her, claiming he was being bullied for doing something nice. “I’m not sure what you expected Doc to do,” was all she said as she went back to prepping the team.


End file.
